LITERARY    LIVES 

EDITED     BY 

W.     ROBERTSON    NICOLL 


CHARLOTTE     BRONTE 
AND     HER    SISTERS 


LITERARY   LIVES 

Edited  by  W.  Robertson  Nicoll,  LL.D. 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD.    By  G.  W.  E.  Russell. 
CARDINAL  NEWMAN.    By  William  Barry,  D.D. 
JOHN  BUNYAN.    By  W.  Hale  White. 
COVENTRY  PATMORE.    By  Edmund  Gosse. 
ERNEST  REN  AN.    By  William  Barry,  D.D. 
CHARLOTTE  BRONTE.    By  Clement  K.  Shorter. 

IN    PREPARATION 

WALTER  SCOTT.    By  A.  Lang. 
R.  H.  HUTTON.    By  W.  Robertson  Nicoll. 
GOETHE.    By  Edward  Dowden. 
HAZLITT.    By  Louise  Imogen  Guiney. 


Each  Volume,  Illustrated,  $i.oo  net.  Postage  lo  cts. 


Xtterary  !lLiv>e6 

CHARLOTTE   BRONTE 

AND   HER  SISTERS 

BY 

CLEMENT    K.    SHORTER 

n 


ILLUSTRATED 


NEW     YORK 

CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S    SONS 

1905 


Copyright,  1905,  by 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

Published,  October,  1905 


•  •       • 

•  •       • 

•  •  •  •  • 


TROW  DIRECTORY 

PRINTING  AND  BOOKBINDING  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK 


Charlotte  Bronte  (Mrs.  Arthur  Bell  Nlcholls) 

From  the  portrait  by  George  RicJunond  in  the  possession  of  Mr.  A.  B.  NichoUs 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER   I 

PAGE 

The  Father  of  Charlotte  Bronte      ...       i 

CHAPTER   II 
The  Mother  of  Charlotte  Bronte     ...     ii 

CHAPTER   III 
Thornton 17 

CHAPTER   IV 
Childhood  at  Haworth      ..„.,..     25 

CHAPTER  V 
Schooldays.     1831-1835 33 

CHAPTER   VI 
Governess  Life 39 

V 


227653 


vi  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  VII 

PAGE 

The  Pension  Heger,  Brussels 57 

CHAPTER   VIII 
Poems 73 

CHAPTER   IX 
Branwell  Bronte 83 

CHAPTER   X 

The  Publications  of  Mr.  Newby      .     .     .     .103 

CHAPTER   XI 
WuTHERiNG  Heights 118 

CHAPTER    XII 
Anne  Bronte 134 

CHAPTER   XIII 
Jane  Eyre 147 

CHAPTER   XIV 
Shirley 171 


CONTENTS  vii 

CHAPTER  XV 

PAGE 
ViLLETTE    AND    ThE    PrOFESSOR    .       .       .       .       ,       .     I9I 

CHAPTER   XVI 
Marriage  and  Death 215 

CHAPTER   XVII 
The   Glamour  of  the  Brontes 229 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

Charlotte  Bronte  (Mrs.  Arthur  Bell  Nicholls)  Frontispiece 


FACING 
PAGE 


The   Rev.  Patrick    Bronte 2 

Charlotte    Bronte's    Birthplace,   Thornton,   York- 
shire      1 8 

The  Old  Parsonage,  Haworth,  as  it  stood  at  the 
time    that    the     Bronte     family     occupied    it 

(1820-1861) 30 

Haworth  Old  Church 40 

Patrick  Branwell  Bronte 96 

The   first  page   of  the   manuscript   of  Jane   Eyre  160 

M.    Paul    Heger,   the    hero    of  Villette    and   The 

Professor 198 

The  Rev.  Arthur  Bell    Nicholls 224 


INTRODUCTION 

This  book  may  seem  at  first  sight  only  an  unto- 
ward accident,  due  to  the  exigencies  of  including  all 
well  known  names  in  a  series  entitled  "  Literary 
Lives."  Mrs.  Gaskell,  it  may  be  said,  wrote  the 
only  Life  of  Charlotte  Bronte  that  everyone  should 
read.  This  is,  in  a  measure,  true,  but  much  new 
material  has  been  published  since  Mrs.  Gaskell 
wrote,  and  this  material  has  not  in  the  interval 
been  gathered  together  into  one  brief  narrative. 
I  have  to  thank  Messrs.  Hodder  &  Stoughton  for 
any  facts  of  that  kind  previously  published  in  my 
Charlotte  Bronte  and  her  Circle^  and  Messrs. 
Smith,  Elder  &  Co.  for  the  same  indulgence  with 
regard  to  the  Haworth  Edition  of  Mrs.  Gaskell's 
L'lfe^  to  which  I  was  privileged  to  add  many  notes. 
The  Haworth  Edition  of  Mrs.  Gaskell's  Life  must 
for  ever  hold  the  field  against  others  by  virtue  of 
its  mass  of  documents  provided  by  the  late  Mr. 
George  Smith.     I  have  added  certain  other  un- 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

published  material  to  this  little  book  although  this 
will  be  discerned  only  by  the  Bronte  enthusiast  who 
knows  the  subject,  as  my  friend  the  late  Lionel 
Johnson  knew  it,  in  its  minutest  detail. 

Perhaps  I  shall  best  disarm  criticism  by  stating 
that  I  have  tried  to  let  Charlotte  Bronte  tell  her 
own  story  through  the  letters  by  her  that  have  been 
brought  to  light  since  Mrs.  Gaskell  wrote. 

I  have  to  thank  two  kind  friends  who  love  the 
Brontes,  Mrs.  Wilfrid  Meynell  and  Dr.  Robert- 
son Nicoll,  for  reading  my  proof-sheets. 


CHAPTER   I 

THE   FATHER   OF   CHARLOTTE   BRONTE 

Patrick  Bronte/  or  Brunty,  the  father  of 
Charlotte  Bronte,  was  an  Irishman.  He  was  born 
in  a  humble  cottage  in  Emdale,  County  Down,  on 
St.  Patrick's  Day,  March  17,  1777.  Although  he 
came  from  the  "  Black  North,"  from  that  partic- 
ular part  of  Ireland  where  Protestantism  flour- 
ishes, largely  through  the  infusion  of  English  and 

^  In  the  Baptismal  Register  of  Drumballyroney  the  name 
is  entered  *'  Brunty"  and  *'  Bruntee";  in  the  books  of  St.  John's 
College,  Cambridge,  on  Patrick  Bronte's  admission  in  1802-3 
it  is  entered  as  Branty,  in  the  Churchwardens'  books  at  Harts- 
head  "Brunty."  But  there  seems  to  be  no  early  signature  of 
Patrick  Bronte's  extant,  and  certainly  no  signature  of  his  Irish 
period,  unless  the  inscription  "Patrick  Brunty,  his  book"  which 
Dr.  Wright  saw  in  an  old  "Arithmetic"  may  be  counted  genu- 
ine, which  I  do  not  believe.  A  "Frank  Prunty"  was  found  by 
Mr.  David  Martin  at  Newtonbutler  in  Co.  Fermanagh,  and  he 
claimed  a  distant  relationship  to  the  Brontes.  At  Cambridge 
Mr.  Bronte  signed  "Bronte,"  at  Wethersfield  "Bronte,"  at 
Dewsbury  Bronte  or  Bronte  or  Bronte.  Not  until  he  arrived 
at  Haworth  do  we  find  his  signature  as  Bronte. 


i-;-.'.:**'ii.. CHARLOTTE   bronte 

Scots  blood,  there  Is  no  evidence  that  there  was  a 
particle  of  blood  other  than  Irish  flowing  In  the 
veins  of  Patrick  Brunty.  His  parents  were  of  the 
peasant  class,  although  his  father,  Hugh  Brunty, 
would  seem  to  have  followed  for  a  long  period  a 
number  of  varied  occupations,  Including  work  In 
a  limekiln  and  work  In  a  cornklln.  The  book  to 
which  we  owe  the  only  glimpse  of  Patrick's  par- 
entage, The  Brontes  in  Ireland^  by  Dr.  Wright,  Is 
so  full  of  Invention  that  It  Is  difficult  to  derive 
therefrom  fragments  of  truth  concerning  the  ear- 
lier Brontes,  or  Bruntys.  It  would  seem  clear,  how- 
ever, that  Hugh  Brunty  married  one  Alice  Mc- 
Clory,  who  had  been  brought  up  In  the  Roman 
Catholic  faith,  but  who,  after  her  marriage  In  the 
Protestant  Church  of  Magherally,  adopted  the  re- 
ligion of  her  husband.^  Ten  children  were  born 
to  Hugh  and  Alice  Brunty,  and  of  these  Patrick, 
the  eldest,  alone  has  any  Interest  for  us. 

After  such  education  as  the  village  school  af- 
forded, young  Patrick  Brunty  became  a  weaver, 

^  The  Brontes  in  Ireland,  or  Facts  Stranger  than  Fiction,  by 
Dr.  William  Wright,  1893. 


Born  March  17,  1777 


Died  June  7,  1861 


The  Rev.   Patrick  Bronte 


THE    FATHER  3 

an  Industry  then,  as  now,  extensively  cultivated 
through  Ulster.  He  could  not  have  been  more 
than  sixteen  years  of  age  when  he  took  the  position 
of  teacher  In  the  Glascar  Presbyterian  School, 
about  a  mile  from  the  Brunty  cottage  at  Emdale. 
A  year  or  two  later  Patrick  became  teacher  of  the 
parish  school  of  Drumballyroney,  and  there,  dur- 
ing his  three  years  of  schoolmastering  (It  Is  sug- 
gested that  he  may  have  saved  the  sum  of  a  hun- 
dred pounds  or  so.  This  enabled  him  to  leave 
Ireland  for  Cambridge,  where  he  entered  himself 
at  St.  John's  College  on  October  i,  1802,  changing 
his  name  from  Brunty  to  Bronte  at  this  tlme.^  In 
April  of  that  year  another  Irishman,  Henry  John 
Temple,  who  was  also  educated  at  St.  John's,  suc- 
ceeded his  father  as  Viscount  Palmerston.  Years 
later  Mr.  Bronte  wrote  to  the  popular  Minister  on 
a  local  question,  but  the  formality  of  his  reply 
makes  It  probable  that  the  peer  and  the  whilom 

^  Whether  the  name  was  assumed  in  honour  of  Nelson,  who 
about  this  time  became  Duke  of  Bronte,  or  whether  his  early 
enthusiasm  for  Greek  guided  his  change  of  name  is  not  known. 
His  eldest  daughter  long  afterwards  signed  herself  in  play  as 
Charlotte  or  rather  as  Charles  Thunder. 


4  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

peasant  were  never  on  speaking  terms.  Palmer- 
stonwas  at  St.  John's  from  April,  1803,  to  January, 
1806. 

We  have  his  own  statement,  written  in  a  copy  of 
Henry  Kirke  White's  Verses^  that  Bronte  knew 
the  unfortunate  young  poet  from  Nottingham. 
Kirke  White  became  a  sizar  at  St.  John's  in  1803, 
through  the  influence  of  the  once  famous  divine, 
Charles  Simeon.  The  one  real  friendship  of 
young  Bronte's  college  life,  however,  was  with  an 
enthusiastic  disciple  of  Dr.  Simeon,  John  Nunn, 
who  afterwards  became  a  clergyman.  Nunn  re- 
newed his  acquaintance  with  Patrick  Bronte  some 
years  later,  as  we  shall  see.  This  is  pretty  well  all 
we  know  of  Mr.  Bronte  at  Cambridge,  apart  from 
the  fact  that  he  was  very  successful  in  eking  out  his 
slender  means,  winning  three  exhibitions  for  poor 
scholars  attached  to  St.  John's.  He  was  thus  able 
not  only  to  support  himself,  but  to  astonish  his 
relatives  in  County  Down  with  remittances — a 
duty  that  he  fulfilled  all  his  days. 

Mr.  Bronte's  first  curacy  was  at  Wethersfield  in 
Essex,  where  his  name  is  to  be  found  in  the  church 


THE    FATHER  5 

books  in  October,  1806.  His  vicar  was  Dr.  Jowett 
— a  non-resident — who  published  a  volume  of  Fit- 
lage  Sermons,  The  curate  had,  of  course,  all  the 
parish  work  in  his  hands.  He  lodged  at  the  house 
of  an  elderly  maiden  lady.  Miss  Mildred  Davy, 
and  this  doubtless  gave  Patrick  Bronte  his  intro- 
duction to  the  more  lively  home  of  Miss  Davy's 
widowed  sister,  Mrs.  Burden  Mrs.  Burder  was 
the  mother  of  four  children,  of  whom  the  eldest 
daughter,  Mary,  was  at  the  time  eighteen  years 
of  age,  and  the  courtship  of  Irish  curate  and  Essex 
lass  was  a  matter  of  course.  A  stern  uncle,  watch- 
ing over  his  niece's  heritage,  interrupted  the  cor- 
respondence ;  there  was  much  heart-break,  'doubt- 
less many  tears,  and  finally  Mr.  Bronte  took  flight 
from  Wethersfield.^  Mary  Burder  waited  long 
for  intercepted  letters  that  never  came,  and  she  was 
still  unwed  when  her  old  lover  became  a  widower 
in  1 82 1.  She  then  received  by  letter  a  further  offer 
of  marriage  from  Mr.  Bronte,  to  which  she  an- 
swered "  No,"  and  thus  denied  to  the  Bronte  chil- 
dren a  kind  stepmother.    Three  years  later  Mary 

^  Life  of  Charlotte  Brontey  by  Augustine  Birrell,  1887. 


6  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

Burder  became  Mrs.  Silree,  the  wife  of  a  Non- 
conformist minister  of  Wethersfield. 

But  this  Is  to  anticipate.  At  present  we  are  only 
concerned  with  a,  for  the  moment,  heartbroken 
young  curate  who,  anxious  to  escape  from  un- 
pleasant conditions,  has  communicated  with  that 
old  college  friend,  John  Nunn.  Mr.  Nunn  held 
a  curacy  at  Shrewsbury  at  this  time.  From  him 
Mr.  Bronte  learnt  that  there  was  a  vacancy  at 
WelHngton,  not  far  away.  Of  this  parish  John 
Eyton,  the  famous  antiquarian,  was  Vicar.  Bronte 
applied  for  and  obtained  the  curacy,  and  with  it 
renewed  pleasant  intercourse  with  his  old  college 
friend.  But  in  a  few  months  everything  was 
changed.  John  Nunn  married,  and  the  friendship 
was  snapped  asunder.  Patrick  Bronte,  with  the 
remembrance  of  Mary  Burder's  apparent  faithless- 
ness still  very  vivid  was  little  in  the  humour  for 
comradeship  with  a  married  man.  He  seized  the 
earliest  opportunity  for  taking  up  parish  work  else- 
where, and  this  time  his  destiny  took  him  to 
Yorkshire,  which  county  was  to  be  his  home  for 
the  rest  of  his  life.    Dewsbury  was  his  next  place 


THE    FATHER  7 

of  sojourn.  Before  we  accompany  him  to  Dews- 
bury,  however,  I  may  as  well  recall  a  pleasant 
sequel  to  this  friendship  with  Mr.  Nunn  that  be- 
longs to  fifty  years  later.  It  is  related  in  a  letter 
to  me  from  Mr.  Nunn's  niece : — 

"In  1857  I  was  staying  with  Mr.  Nunn  at 
Thorndon,  in  Suffolk,  of  which  place  he  was  rector. 
The  good  man  had  never  read  a  novel  in  his  life, 
and  of  course  had  never  heard  of  the  famous 
Bronte  books.  I  was  reading  Mrs.  Gaskell's  Life 
with  absorbed  interest,  and  one  day  my  uncle  said, 

*  I  have  heard  lately  a  name  mentioned  with  which 
I  was  well  famihar.  What  is  it  all  about?  '  He 
was  told,  when  he  added,  *  Patrick  Bronte  was 
once  my  greatest  friend.'  Next  morning  my  uncle 
brought  out  a  thick  bundle  of  old  letters  and  said, 

*  These  were  written  by  Patrick  Bronte.  They  re- 
late to  his  spiritual  state.  I  have  read  them  once 
more  and  now  I  destroy  them.' '' 

It  was  in  January  1809  that  this  Wellington  epi- 
sode commenced,  and  at  the  end  of  the  same  year 
Mr.  Bronte  began  his  long  association  with  York- 
shire as  curate  of  Dewsbury.     Mr.  Bronte  always 


8  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

seemed  to  have  secured  '*  literary  "  vicars,  and  his 
new  vicar,  Mr.  Buckmaster,  had  some  titles  to 
fame  as  a  hymn  writer  and  a  contributor  to  the 
magazines  of  the  day.  He  was,  moreover,  the  suc- 
cessor at  Dewsbury  to  the  Rev.  Matthew  Powley, 
who  married  the  only  daughter  of  Mary  Unwin — 
Cowper's  "  Mary  " — and  was  a  regular  corre- 
spondent of  the  poet. 

At  Dewsbury  Mr.  Bronte  stayed  two  years,  and 
we  may  well  assume  that  his  vicar's  literary  activi- 
ties kindled  some  desire  for  a  similar  reputation. 
He  wrote  verses — and  published  them.  In  1811 
there  was  issued  at  Halifax  a  volume  entitled 
Cottage  Poems}  It  contains  "  An  Epistle  to  the 
Rev.  J B while  journeying  for  the  recov- 

^  It  is  an  interesting  fact  that  Mr.  Bronte  was  not  the  first 
of  his  own  family  with  an  inclination  for  writing.  Dr.  Douglas 
Hyde,  the  well  known  Gaelic  scholar,  has  in  his  possession  a 
manuscript  volume  in  the  Irish  language,  written  by  one  Patrick 
O'Prunty  in  1763.  Patrick  O'Prunty  was,  I  should  imagine, 
an  elder  brother  of  Mr.  Bronte's  father.  The  little  book  was 
called  The  Adventures  of  the  Son  of  the  Ice  Counsel,  and  there  is  a 
colophon  of  which  Dr.  Douglas  Hyde  sends  me  the  original  and 
a  translation;  he  also  sends  me  the  first  quatrain  of  Patrick 
O'Prunty's  poem: — 


THE    FATHER  9 

ery  of  his  health,"  and  there  is  much  more  of  no 
great  distinction.  Patrick  Bronte  did  not  publish 
Cottage  Poems  until  he  reached  his  next  curacy 
at  Hartshead-cum-Clifton.  A  slight  disagreement, 
the  remark  of  a  churchwarden  that  Mr.  Buckmas- 
ter  should  not  "  keep  a  dog  and  bark  himself,"  in 
other  words,  that  the  Vicar  should  not  preach  and 
pay  a  curate  for  preaching,  excited  Mr.  Bronte's 

Colophon  to  the  Adventures  of  the  Son  of  Ice  Counsel, 

Guidhim  beannocht  gach  leightheora  a  n-anoir  na  Trio- 
noite  agas  na  h-6ighe  Muine  air  an  sgribhneoir.  Padruig  ua 
Pronntuidh  mhic  Neill,  mhic  Seathain,  etc.     April  y^  20,  1763. 

I  pray  the  blessing  of  each  reader  in  honour  of  the  Trinity 
and  of  the  Virgin  Mary  on  the  writer,  that  is  Patrick  O'Prunty, 
son  of  Niall,  son  of  Seathan,  etc.     April  ye  20,  1763. 

First  Quatrain  of  Patrick  0*Prunty^s  poem. 

Nochad  millean  failte  fior 

Uaim  do  theachta  an  airdriogh 

Thainic  chugainn  anois  go  mbuaidh 

Na  stiughraighthoir  os  cionn  priomhshluagh. 

Ninety  millions  of  true  welcomes 
From  me  to  the  coming  of  the  high  King 
Who  is  come  to  us  now  with  victory 
As  a  guide  over  the  chief-hosts. 


lo  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

anger,  for  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  curate  was 
quick-tempered.  He  promptly  resigned.  Mr. 
Buckmaster,  however,  assisted  his  irascible  friend 
to  his  next  appointment,  one  of  greater  security  of 
tenure — the  incumbency  of  Hartshead-cum-Clifton 
— and  it  was  here  that  the  young  Irishman  met 
the  woman  who  was  to  become  his  wife — the 
mother  of  Charlotte  Bronte. 


CHAPTER    II 

THE    MOTHER    OF    CHARLOTTE  BRONTE 

Curate  then  of  Hartshead,  we  find  Patrick 
Bronte  at  the  age  of  thirty-four,  healed,  we  may 
believe,  of  the  wound  inflicted  upon  his  heart  by 
a  certain  Essex  romance  and  with  mind  bent  on 
marriage.  Here  there  enters  upon  the  scene  a 
quiet  and  gentle  little  woman  from  Cornwall — 
Maria  Branwell.  Miss  Branwell  is  one  of  a  large 
family,  fairly  prosperous,  who  reside  in  Penzance. 
A  family  vault  in  St.  Mary's  churchyard  in  that 
town  records  that  Thomas  Branwell  died  in  1808, 
and  that  his  wife  followed  him  to  the  grave  in  the 
following  year.  They  had  one  son  and  six*  daugh- 
ters. Mr.  Branwell  is  described  as  "  assistant  to 
the  corporation,"  whatever  that  official's  duties  may 
have  been.  He  left  his  daughters  not  entirely  un- 
provided for — I  should  judge  with  some  thirty 
pounds  a  year  apiece.  Maria  Branwell  came  into 
Yorkshire  a  year  or  two  after  her  mother's  death  to 


12  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

see  some  friends.  She  was  in  any  case  to  make  a 
prolonged  stay  with  her  aunt,  Mrs.  Fennell,  her 
father's  sister.  Mr.  Fennell  was  the  Headmaster 
of  Woodhouse  Green  Wesleyan  Academy,  where 
Maria  Branwell's  brother  was  a  student.  It  was  no 
doubt  his  friendship  with  Mr.  William  Morgan, 
the  curate  of  the  neighbouring  church  of  Guiseley, 
that  gave  Mr.  Bronte  his  introduction  to  the  Fen- 
nells.  Mr.  Morgan  was  engaged  to  Maria  Bran- 
well's  cousin,  Jane  Fennell.  Patrick  Bronte  speed- 
ily lost  his  heart.  There  were  a  few  love-letters 
between  the  engagement  in  August  1812  and  the 
marriage  on  December  29th  of  that  year,  when  at 
Guiseley  Church  Maria  Branwell  became  Mrs. 
Bronte.  There  was  a  touch  of  romance  in  the  very 
wedding.  A  sister  and  a  cousin  of  Mrs.  Bronte 
were  married  on  the  same  day,  the  sister  Charlotte 
Branwell  in  far  away  Penzance  to  her  cousin  Jo- 
seph Branwell,  and  Jane  Fennell  to  Mr.  Morgan. 
Mr.  Morgan  performed  the  marriage  ceremony 
for  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Bronte,  and  Mr.  Bronte  in  re- 
turn officiated  a  few  moments  later  to  make  his 
wife's  cousin  Mrs.  Morgan. 


THE    MOTHER  13 

It  was  stated  by  a  niece  who  died  a  year  or 
two  ago  that  all  three  marriages  were  "  profoundly 
happy."  ^  There  is  no  room  to  doubt  this,  although 
much  ill-natured  myth  has  gathered  round  Mr. 
Bronte  as  a  husband.  But  there  is  no  disguising 
the  pathos  of  his  wife's  destiny.  For  her  there 
were  eight  years  of  married  life  in  the  cold,  bleak 
surroundings  of  Hartshead  and  Thornton,  the  giv- 
ing birth  to  six  successive  children,  and  then,  all 
too  quickly,  death  in  the  gaunt,  comfortless  rectory 
at  Haworth. 

It  has  been  said  that  Mrs.  Gaskell  exaggerated 
the  tragedy  of  Charlotte  Bronte's  life,  but  not  the 
most  cheery  optimist  can  find  much  sunshine  in  the 
married  life  of  her  poor  mother.  Mr.  Bronte  may 
have  been  a  good  husband.  On  the  whole,  he  was 
doubtless  thoroughly  kind  and  considerate.  But 
the  best  of  men  are  prone  to  blindness  in  the  face 
of  a  gentle,  lonely  woman's  needs,  and  one  suspects 
that  the  money  spent  in  publishing  his  own  well- 
nigh  worthless  verses  had  better  have  been  given 

^  Letter  to  the  author  from  the  late  Miss  Branwell,  of 
Penzance. 


14  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

to  his  wife.  But  we  may  be  sure  that  such  a 
thought  never  entered  her  head.  The  pathos  of 
Mrs.  Bronte's  brief  married  life  is  heightened  by 
the  love-letters  that  the  world  has  been  privileged 
to  read.  Maria  Branwell  at  Wood  House  Grove 
exchanged  letters  with  Patrick  Bronte  at  Harts- 
head.  Patrick's  letters  have  not  been  preserved. 
Maria's  were  read  long  years  afterwards  by  her 
daughter  Charlotte,  who  remarked  concerning 
them : — 

"  A  few  days  since  a  little  incident  happened 
which  curiously  touched  me.  Papa  put  into  my 
hands  a  little  packet  of  letters  and  papers,  telling 
me  that  they  were  mamma's,  and  that  I  might  read 
them.  I  did  read  them  in  a  frame  of  mind  I  cannot 
describe.  The  papers  were  yellow  with  time,  all 
having  been  written  before  I  was  born;  it  was 
strange  now  to  peruse,  for  the  first  time,  the  records 
of  a  mind  whence  my  own  sprang,  and  most 
strange,  and  at  once  sad  and  sweet,  to  find  that 
mind  of  a  truly  fine,  pure,  and  elevated  order. 
They  were  written  to  papa  before  they  were  mar- 
ried.    There  is  a  rectitude,  a  refinement,  a  con- 


THE    MOTHER  15 

stancy,  a  modesty,  a  sense,  a  gentleness  in  them  in- 
describable. I  wish  that  she  had  lived  and  that  I 
had  known  her."  ^ 

The  letters  of  Mrs.  Bronte  well  deserve  her 
daughter's  eulogy.  They  are  beautiful  letters, 
these  love-letters  of  ninety  years  since,  with  their 
hopes  of  the  future,  their  devotion,  their  playful 
affection.  "  My  dear  saucy  Pat "  is  the  opening 
line  of  one  letter,  which  indeed  continues  with  the 
question,  "  What  will  you  say  when  you  get  a  real 
right  down  scolding?  "  If  ever  a  man  secured  the 
love  of  a  good  woman,  one  feels  that  Mr.  Bronte 
was  thus  fortunate.  But,  as  I  have  said,  the  sequel 
is  not  rose-coloured.  There  came  a  constant  succes- 
sion of  little  children,  and  then  the  mother's  death 
a  few  months  after  the  birth  of  the  last  child,  Anne. 

Mr.  Bronte  was  five  years  at  Hartshead-cum- 
Clifton,  and  here  two  children  were  born  to  him, 
the  first  being  named  Maria  and  the  second  Eliza- 
beth. During  this  period  Mr.  Bronte  became  an 
industrious  author. 

He  published  in  Halifax,  as  has  already  been 
*  Letter  to  Ellen  Nussey. 


i6  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

said,  a  little  volume  of  verse  entitled  Cottage 
Poems  in  1811,  and  in  18 13,  about  the  time  when 
his  first  child  was  born,  yet  another  volume,  called 
The  Rural  Minstrel.  This  did  not  conclude  his 
literary  activity  during  his  first  five  years  at  Harts- 
head,  for  a  tiny  prose  volume,  called  The  Cottage 
in  the  Wood^  was  also  issued  by  him  in  Halifax 
before  he  went  to  Thornton. 

During  his  married  life  at  Hartshead  Mr. 
Bronte  lived  in  a  house  at  the  top  of  Clough  Lane, 
Hightown.  Then  a  friend,  one  Mr.  Atkinson,  of- 
\  fered  to  exchange  the  living  of  Thornton  for  that 
of  Hartshead,  and  the  exchange  was  effected.  Mr. 
Atkinson  is  of  interest  to  us  as  the  godfather  of 
Charlotte  Bronte.  His  wife  was  also  her  god- 
mother. She  was  a  Miss  Walter,  of  Lascelles 
Hall,  near  Huddersfield,  and  it  was  to  be  near  this 
lady  that  the  young  curate  exchanged  with  Mr. 
Bronte.  Mr.  Atkinson  remained  In  possession  of 
the  perpetual  curacy  at  Hartshead  until  1866,  and 
he  lived  there  until  1870.  Both  he  and  his  wife 
were  very  kind  to  Mr.  Bronte's  children,  we  are 
told. 


CHAPTER    III 

THORNTON 

Thornton  Is  even  to-day  a  small,  as  it  is  also 
a  very  ugly,  village.  It  is  some  three  miles  from 
Bradford  in  Yorkshire.  We  may  assume  that  Mr. 
Atkinson,  in  exchanging  livings,  sacrificed  some- 
thing of  material  good  in  his  desire  to  be  near  his 
future  wife,  with  whom  he  acquired  a  competency. 
Mr.  Bronte  also  may  have  been  influenced  less  by 
monetary  considerations  than  by  the  nearness  of 
Mr.  Morgan,  who,  it  will  be  remembered,  was 
married  to  his  wife's  cousin,  and  who  about  this 
time  became  Vicar  of  Christ  Church,  Bradford. 
The  house  to  which  the  young  mother  removed  in 
May  1 8 15,  with  her  two  little  children — one  a 
babe  of  three  months  old — still  stands.  It  is  a 
plain,  unpicturesque  structure,  rendered  more  plain 
and  unpicturesque  by  the  fact  that  half  of  its  front- 
age  has  been   converted   into   a   butcher's   shop. 

17 


1 8  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

Near  by  there  stands  a  new  church,  in  the  regis- 
ters of  which  are  recorded  the  baptisms  of  the  fa- 
mous Bronte  children. 

Opposite  the  then  "  parsonage,"  if  so  mean  a 
house  could  ever  have  been  dignified  by  such  a 
name,  may  be  seen  the  ruin  of  the  Old  Bell  Chapel, 
where  Mr.  Bronte  preached  and  where  five  of  his 
children  were  baptized.  A  baptism  of  one  of 
them  indeed  marks  the  early  months  of  Mr. 
Bronte's  sojourn  in  Thornton.  Elizabeth,  who 
had  been  born  in  Hartshead  in  the  previous  May, 
was  christened  here  in  August.  Mr.  Fennell  of- 
ficiated, and  a  local  magnate,  Mr.  Firth,  and  his 
daughter  were  godfather  and  godmother,  while 
the  second  godmother  was  Miss  Elizabeth  Bran- 
well,  who  had  come  from  Penzance  on  her  first 
visit  to  her  married  sister,  staying  fully  a  year  at 
Thornton. 

That  Old  Bell  Chapel,  built  as  a  chapel-of-ease 
to  Bradford  Parish  Church,  as  was  also  Haworth 
Church,  six  miles  away,  was  to  have  still  more 
notable  christenings.  For  Charlotte  and  Emily 
Bronte  were  both  born  in  this  unpretentious  cot- 


Photo  J.  J.  Stead 
Charlotte  Bronte's  Birthplace 

Thornton,  Yorkshire,  where  Mr.  Bronte  was  curate  from  1816  to  1820 


THORNTON  19 

tage  In  Thornton — Charlotte  on  April  21,  18 16, 
and  Emily  Jane  on  July  30,  18 18.  The  only  boy, 
who  was  christened  Patrick  Branwell,  was  born 
here  on  June  26,  18 17.  Finally,  the  sixth  and  last 
child  put  In  an  appearance.  This  was  Anne,  who 
was  born  January  17,  1820,  very  shortly  before 
her  parents  removed  to  Haworth. 

Of  the  life  of  Mr.  Bronte  during  those  five 
years  at  Thornton  little  is  recorded.  We  know  in- 
deed that  he  still  wrote  verses  and  prose  stories  of 
a  kind,  and  that  he  contributed  a  sermon  on  ''  Con- 
version "  to  the  Pastoral  Visitor,  He  had  his 
modest  share  of  recognition  from  the  critics  then 
and  later.  His  friend  Mr.  Morgan  described  The 
Cottage  in  the  Wood  In  the  Pastoral  Visitor  as  ''  a 
very  amusing  and  Instructive  tale,"  and  so  late  as 
1845,  J'^st  before  his  daughters  had  made  him  fa- 
mous, one  Newsam,  In  his  Poets  of  Yorkshire,  de- 
voted no  less  than  five  lines  of  appreciation  (with 
eighteen  lines  of  quotation)  to  Mr.  Bronte  as  a 
poet.^     Mr.  Bronte's  work  was,  however,  medio- 

^  "The  Poets  of  Yorkshire,  comprising  sketches  and  the 
Lives  and  Specimens  of  the  writing  of  those  'Children  of  Song' 


20  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

ere,  and  would  long  since  have  been  forgotten  were 
it  not  for  his  daughter's  fame.  It  is  more  pleas- 
ant to  meet  him  in  Thornton  as  a  social  rather 
than  as  a  literary  luminary,  and,  although  our 
knowledge  of  him  is  scanty  in  this  respect,  it  is  in- 
teresting as  far  as  it  goes.  One  Miss  Elizabeth 
Firth,  who  was  in  1824  to  become  the  wife  of  the 
Rev.  James  Franks,  Vicar  of  Huddersfield,  was 
eighteen  years  of  age  when,  in  18 15,  the  Rev.  Pat- 
rick Bronte  removed  from  Hartshead  to  Thornton. 
She  was  living  with  her  father  at  Kipping  House, 
Thornton.  She  had  been,  by  the  way,  a  pupil  of 
Miss  Richmal  Mangnall,  the  author  of  the  once 
famous  MangnaWs  Questions.  That  lady  was  for 
many  years  a  schoolmistress  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  Wakefield.  Miss  Firth  made  speedy  acquaint- 
ance with  Mrs.  Bronte,  and,  as  we  have  seen,  be- 
came one  of  the  child  Elizabeth's  godmothers. 
Miss  Firth  kept  a  diary,  a  diary  all  too  scanty. 

who  have  been  natives  of,  or  otherwise  connected  with,  the 
county  of  York.  Commenced  by  the  late  William  Cartwright 
Newsam,  completed  and  published  for  the  benefit  of  his  family 
by  John  Holland."  Price  ^s.  250  copies  printed.  London: 
Groombridge  &  Sons.     Sheffield:    Ridge  &  Jackson.     1845. 


THORNTON  21 

It  consisted  the  merest  notes  in  a  pocket-book. 
"  We  drank  tea  at  Mr.  Bronte's,"  is  one  day's 
Item,  and  "  Mr.  Bronte  and  Mrs.  Morgan  drank 
tea  here,"  Is  another;  and  so  on  through  the  ^ve 
years.  Mr.  Bronte  Is  seen  as  a  most  sociable  in- 
dividual, and  constant  records  of  tea-drlnking  are 
noted.  On  July  26,  18 16,  we  learn  that  "  Miss 
Branwell  returned  to  Penzance,"  so  that  we  know 
from  this  and  from  no  other  source  that  she  was 
In  attendance  on  the  young  mother  when  Charlotte 
was  born.  From  one  entry  we  learn  that  Miss 
Firth  had  a  mind  of  her  own  in  literature.  "  Read 
Old  Mortality,  Didn't  like  it,"  she  says  In  her 
diary.  But  she  is  kinder  to  some  of  Sir  Walter 
Scott's  later  books. 

It  Is  to  Miss  Firth  alone  that  we  are  indebted 
for  the  actual  dates  of  birth  of  all  the  Bronte  chil- 
dren. On  January  17,  1820,  we  find  the  announce- 
ment of  another  accession  to  the  Bronte  family. 
This  was  the  day  that  Anne  was  born.  In  that 
month  also  is  the  record,  "  Gave  at  Anne's  chris- 
tening, one  pound."  Altogether,  one  sighs  over 
the  fact  that  Mistress  Elizabeth  Firth  was  not  a 


22  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

more  voluble  person.  One  real  glimpse  of  Mrs. 
Bronte  as  she  impressed  a  sister  woman,  one  vivid 
picture  of  these  years  relative  to  the  birth  of  Char- 
lotte or  Emily,  one  saying  of  the  poor  mother  piti- 
lessly hurrying  to  her  doom,  would  have  been  pa- 
thetically interesting.  Two  months  after  Anne's 
birth  we  find  the  entry,  "  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Bronte 
came  to  dinner,"  and  so  it  seems  that  both  husband 
and  wife  had  their  share  of  social  life  In  those 
days,  to  say  nothing  of  the  companionship  of  the 
sister  from  Penzance. 


Let  me  explain  here  that  Mr.  Bronte  as  Incum- 
bent of  Thornton  was  called  "  minister."  Thomas 
Atkinson,  who  preceded  Mr.  Bronte,  was  "  min- 
ister," and  so  also  was  William  Bishop,  who  suc- 
ceeded him  in  1820.  Richard  Henry  Heap,  who 
came  to  Thornton  in  1855,  was  the  first  "  vicar," 
the  title  that  now  obtains. 

It  may  be  added  that  Thornton  has  a  history 
quite  apart  from  the  Brontes.  With  all  Its  exter- 
nal sordidness,  it  has  had  a  wide-reaching  spiritual 


THORNTON  23 

activity.  Here,  a  century  before  Mr.  Bronte's  ar- 
rival had  flourished  eminent  divines  of  Noncon- 
formity, whose  ashes  rest  amid  the  ruins  of  the  Old 
Bell  Chapel.  There,  most  notable  of  all,  were 
Joseph  Lister  and  his  son  Accepted,  whose  name 
savours  so  well  of  the  older  puritanism.  Joseph 
Lister,  indeed,  in  his  Autobiography,  a  book  that 
has  had  much  fame  in  its  day,  explains  the  curious 
name  of  young  *'  Accepted."  His  wife  was  in 
great  spiritual  depression  when  the  child  was  born. 
This  depression,  we  are  told,  was  lifted  almost 
Immediately,  and  then,  as  Lister  says  In  the  quaint 
language  of  his  age: — 

"...  the  Lord  was  pleased  to  shine  in  upon 
her  soul  again,  to  her  great  satisfaction,  and  she 
was  filled  with  peace  and  joy  through  believing; 
in  consideration  of  which  we  resolved  to  give  him 
this  name;  and  God  hath  made  him  acceptable  to 
many  souls,  though  it  pleased  the  Lord  to  afflict 
him  with  a  great  weakness  in  his  joints    ..." 

Mr.  Bronte  came,  then,  into  an  evangelical  tra- 
dition, and  his  wife's  uncle,  Mr.  Fennell,  who 
about  this  time  abandoned  Wesleyanism  and  be- 


24  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

came  a  clergyman  of  the  Church  of  England, 
helped  to  keep  him  in  toleration  for  all  aspects  of 
the  evangelical  creed.  Apparently  he  never  quar- 
relled with  Nonconformity,  although  at  a  much 
later  date  some  of  his  curates  at  Haworth  did. 
Vigorous  hatred  of  the  tenets  of  the  Church  of 
Rome  he  had  imbibed  from  his  North  of  Ireland 
environment,  and  that  sentiment  was  part  of  the 
inheritance  of  his  brilliant  children,  notably  of  his 
daughter  Charlotte. 


CHAPTER    IV 

CHILDHOOD   AT   HAWORTH 

Charlotte  Bronte  was  a  little  girl  of  six 
years  of  age  when  her  father  exchanged  Thornton 
for  Haworth.  We  have  no  glimpse  of  her  at 
Thornton;  we  have  little  enough  glimpse  of  the 
child  and  her  brother  and  sisters  in  the  first  years 
at  Haworth.  When  Mrs.  Gaskell  wrote,  there 
were  people  who  well  remembered  the  departure 
of  Mr.  Bronte  and  his  family — the  carts  laden 
with  the  minister's  furniture,  the  delicate  mother 
and  her  six  little  children,  the  eldest,  Maria,  only 
seven  years  of  age.  The  change,  if  change  were 
helpful,  was  all  to  that  mother's  advantage.  The 
house  was  much  better  situated,  at  a  healthier  alti- 
tude, and  pleasantly  jutting  on  the  glorious  moors. 
Given  genuine  health,  Mrs.  Bronte  could  have  been 
happy  enough  at  Haworth — happier  than  at 
Thornton.     But  physical  health  she  had  not,  nor 

25 


a6  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

did  her  children  inherit  it  from  her,  and  therein 
lay  more  than  half  the  tragedy  of  their  lives,  and 
the  all  too  early  death  of  every  one  of  them. 

Mrs.  Bronte's  stay  in  that  moorland  home  was 
not  a  long  one.  She  and  her  family  arrived  at  the 
vicarage  somewhere  in  April  1820.  Mr.  Bronte, 
it  is  true,  took  the  Haworth  services  from  Feb- 
ruary, but  it  is  clear  that  he  left  his  family  behind 
him  then  as  the  guests  of  the  Firths,  at  Kipping 
House.  As  a  stalwart  walker,  the  journey  to  and 
fro  could  never  have  troubled  him.  His  visits  to 
Thornton  continue  to  be  recorded  in  Miss  Firth's 
diary  many  times  during  this  year  1820.  In  Sep- 
tember of  that  year,  after  less  than  six  months  of 
life  in  Haworth,  Mrs.  Bronte  died.  If  we  are  to 
beheve  gossip,  the  bereaved  husband  tried  in  two 
quarters  to  find  a  stepmother  for  his  little  children. 
He  first  applied  to  Mary  Burder,  of  Wethers- 
field,  as  we  have  seen,  and  then  to  Elizabeth  Firth, 
of  Thornton.  Twice  refused,  he  turned  to  his 
wife's  sister,  Elizabeth  Branwell,  of  Penzance, 
and  asked  her  to  come  and  be  housekeeper  and  in 
a  manner  a  mother  to  his  little  ones.     The  duties 


CHILDHOOD   AT    HAWORTH       27 

were  accepted  and  faithfully  performed  for  twen- 
ty-two years. 

Returning  for  a  moment  to  Mrs.  Bronte,  we  find 
her  life  story  to  be  a  brief  and  unquestionably  a 
pathetic  one.  She  is  preserved  for  us  in  her  daugh- 
ter's biography  by  a  number  of  love-letters  and  by 
a  brief  religious  essay  of  no  particular  individual- 
ity.^ Mr.  Bronte  was  deeply  attached  to  his  wife, 
and  there  is  no  reason  to  accept  for  a  moment  the 
various  foolish  stories  of  his  treatment  of  her  in 
those  later  days  of  her  life.  The  value  of  the 
scandalous  Haworth  stories  that  have  stuck  to  Mr. 
Bronte,  although  Mrs.  Gaskell  was  compelled  to 
withdraw  them  from  later  editions  of  her  Life,  may 
be  gauged  from  the  fact  that  Mr.  Bronte  had  only, 
as  we  have  seen,  six  months  of  married  life  at  Ha- 
worth, while  at  Thornton  he  was  in  every  way  in- 
clined to  sociability.  Some  measure  of  moroseness 
may,  however,  have  come  over  Mr.  Bronte  in  the 
period  following  his  bereavement.     Taking  him- 

^  The  love-letters  are  in  the  possession  of  Mr.  A.  B.  Nicholls. 
The  manuscript  entitled  "The  Advantages  of  Poverty  in  Re- 
ligious Concerns"  is  in  my  library. 


28  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

self  and  his  work  seriously,  he  did  not  care  to  let 
that  work  be  interrupted  too  much  by  his  children. 
They  therefore  pursued  their  studies  and  partook 
of  their  meals  very  much  under  their  aunt's  guid- 
ance, their  father  frequently  having  his  meals 
alone.  They  met  in  his  study — the  parlour — on 
the  right-hand  side  of  the  doorway  as  you  enter 
the  house,  for  tea,  but  they  saw  little  of  him  dur- 
ing the  rest  of  the  day. 

We  may  imagine,  then,  these  six  children  work- 
ing the  samplers  that  remain  to  us,  at  their  aunt's 
knee,  reading  such  little  books  as  came  into  their 
hands — books,  we  may  be  sure,  too  "  old  "  for  the 
little  people.  They  had  the  usual  experiences  of 
orphan  children,  much  grim  kindness  from  aunt 
and  servants.  The  servants  of  that  time,  Sarah 
and  Nancy  Garrs,  were  asked  for  their  impres- 
sions in  later  life,  and  then  at  least  they  were  enthu- 
siastic. Never  was  so  kind  a  master  as  Mr. 
Bronte,  never  so  clever  a  little  child  as  Charlotte. 
We  may  accept  such  testimony  with  a  grain  of  salt, 
but  the  main  fact  remains  that  it  was  a  reasonably 
happy  home  until  the  educational  problem  asserted 


CHILDHOOD    AT    HAWORTH       29 

Itself.  Education  has  always  special  credentials 
for  the  self-made  man,  and  Mr.  Bronte  not  un- 
naturally availed  himself  of  the  Clergy  Daughters' 
School  at  Casterton,  where  a  good  subsidized 
education  was  provided  at  fourteen  pounds  a 
year.  Maria,  the  eldest  girl,  entered  the  school 
on  July  I,  1824,  and  Elizabeth,  aged  nine,  on 
the  same  day.  Charlotte  entered  on  August 
10,  1824,  and  Emily  November  25  of  that 
year,  the  former  being  eight  years  old  and  the 
latter  less  than  six.  The  school  brought  no 
happiness  to  the  four  delicate,  anaemic  children. 
No  boarding  school  of  that  epoch  would  have  done 
so.  Such  places  are  only  possible  for  the  physi- 
cally robust.  But  there  is  not  much  need  to  asso- 
ciate too  closely  the  sad  fate  of  Maria  and  Eliza- 
beth Bronte — both  of  whom  left  the  school  in 
1825  to  die — with  the  actual  defects  of  the  cheap 
boarding  school  system  of  the  period.  Maria  left 
in  February,  and  died  in  May;  Elizabeth  left  in 
May,  and  died  on  June  15.  On  June  i  Charlotte 
and  Emily  returned  to  Haworth.  Charlotte 
Bronte  long  years  afterwards  was  to  gibbet  for  all 


30  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

time  the  worst  aspects  of  our  inferior  girls'  schools 
in  *'  Lowood,"  of  Jane  Eyre^  as  Dickens,  a  little 
later,  was  to  gibbet  the  inferior  boys'  schools  in 
"  Dotheboys  Hall ''  of  Nicholas  Nicklehy,  After 
Miss  Bronte's  death  her  biographer,  Mrs.  Gaskell, 
got  into  trouble  for  her  identification  of  the  Lo- 
wood of  Jane  Eyre  with  the  Casterton  presided 
over  by  the  Rev.  Carus  Wilson.  A  very  consider- 
able mass  of  opinion  was  brought  together  from 
old  pupils  to  prove  that,  even  when  the  little 
Brontes  were  there,  Casterton  was  a  most  exem- 
plary institution.  The  point  is  scarcely  worth  dis- 
puting over  now.  Much  more  depends  upon  health 
in  early  childhood  than  at  any  other  time.  Food 
that  to  one  child  is  a  torture  to  eat,  to  another  pro- 
vides a  real  gratification  of  appetite;  an  environ- 
ment that  to  one  child  is  hell,  to  another  is  para- 
dise. The  little  Bronte  girls  had  fragile  constitu- 
tions and  therein,  it  cannot  be  too  often  repeated, 
lay  the  whole  tragedy  of  their  lives. 

There  was  little  of  tragedy,  but  much  of  happi- 
ness, however,  in  the  years  immediately  following 
their  leaving  Casterton  and  the  death  of  the  two 


I  i 


CHILDHOOD    AT    HAWORTH      31 

elder  sisters.  Miss  Branwell  was  doubtless  a  very 
prim  personage,  although  kindly  withal.  There 
is  no  reason  to  suppose  but  that  she  did  her  best 
for  the  four  orphaned  children,  of  whom  Char- 
lotte, the  eldest,  was  nine  years  of  age  when  she 
left  Cowan  Bridge,  and  fourteen  when  she  entered 
Roe  Head  School.  Those  five  years  were,  as  I 
have  said,  fairly  happy.  There  is  a  copy  of  The 
Imitation  of  Christ  extant,  given  to  Charlotte  in 
1826,  and  there  are  other  books  that  we  know  the 
children  read  during  this  period,  including  Scott's 
Tales  of  a  Grandfather.  They  also  commenced 
to  write  "  original  compositions,"  as  so  many  chil- 
dren of  precocious  tendencies  do — to  the  joy  of 
fond  and  ambitious  parents.  But  I  am  not  sure 
that  children  often  cultivate  the  minute  handwrit- 
ing that  was  affected  by  the  Bronte  prodigies. 
There  are  perhaps  a  hundred  little  manuscript 
books  in  existence,  principally  the  work  of  Char- 
lotte and  Branwell,  some  few,  however,  by  Emily 
and  Anne.  They  were  compiled  in  a  micro- 
scopic handwriting  probably  from  reasons  of  econ- 
omy.   Pence,  we  may  be  sure,  were  scarce  with  the 


32  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

little  ones.  The  booklets  were  stitched  and  cov- 
ered, sugar-paper  being  in  most  cases  used  for  the 
wrappers.  It  is  not  possible  to  trace  any  particular 
talent  in  these  little  books,  many  of  which  bear  the 
date  1829.  Assuredly  hundreds  of  children  who 
have  never  come  to  fame  have  written  quite  as  well. 
It  was  noteworthy,  however,  that  the  little  Brontes 
had  their  heroes,  who  were  also  the  heroes  of  the 
hour.  They  took  the  victorious  Duke  of  Welling- 
ton to  their  hearts,  and  also  the  duke's  sons,  the 
Marquis  of  Douro  and  Lord  Charles  Wellesley, 
who  figure  largely  in  their  tiny  pages.  It  was  a 
life  of  dreams,  of  a  kind  that  children  delight  in, 
that  indeed  makes  the  life  of  childhood  ever  alter- 
nately beautiful  and  terrible.  On  the  wild  moors 
behind  the  house  there  must  have  been  in  any  case 
much  supreme  happiness  for  the  little  Brontes  in 
those  early  years  that  preceded  the  real  schooldays 
now  opening  to  them. 


CHAPTER   V 

SCHOOLDAYS.     1831— 1835. 

In  January  1831,  Charlotte  Bronte  became  a 
pupil  at  Roe  Head,  Dewsbury.  The  headmistress 
was  a  Miss  Margaret  Wooler,  who  survived  her 
famous  pupil  by  many  long  years,  dying  In  1885. 
There  were  never  more  than  ten  pupils  during  the 
year  and  a  half  that  Charlotte  was  at  school,  but 
among  them  were  two  to  whom  we  owe  all  of  most 
interest  concerning  Miss  Bronte  In  the  years  before 
fame  came  to  her.  These  fellow  pupils  were  Ellen 
Nussey  and  Mary  Taylor,  each  of  them  fourteen 
years  of  age,  that  Is  to  say,  a  year  younger  than 
their  friend.  Of  both  Mary  Taylor  and  Ellen 
Nussey  Miss  Bronte  has  left  vivid  descriptions,  full 
of  Insight  and  characterization  that  time  was  to 
verify.  Miss  Taylor  was  business-like,  matter-of- 
fact,  '*  Intellectual  " ;  Miss  Nussey  was  simply 
pretty  and  lovable,  but  hero-worshipping  to  an  al- 

33 


34  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

most  morbid  degree.  Both  girls  had  to  undergo 
great  vicissitudes  of  fortune,  their  families  falling 
on  evil  days  in  later  years,  but  Miss  Taylor  was 
to  have  the  wider  experience,  and  the  larger  out- 
look upon  life.  She  went  to  New  Zealand  to  ''  set 
up  shop,"  as  she  expressed  it,  only  returning  to 
England  when  she  had  secured  a  competency.^ 
Miss  Nussey  lived  to  a  good  old  age  in  the  district 
where  her  childhood  had  been  passed.  From 
1857,  when  she  gave  Mrs.  Gaskell  material  assist- 
ance in  her  Life^  until  her  death  in  1897,  she  was 
always  accessible  to  the  admirers  of  Charlotte 
Bronte,  and  she  carefully  preserved  the  volumi- 
nous correspondence  of  her  friend,  most  of  which 
has  been  published.^  It  is  to  Ellen  Nussey  that  we 
owe  all  the  best  glimpses  of  Charlotte  Bronte  as 

^  Miss  Mary  Taylor  wrote  two  books,  Miss  Miles,  a  Tale 
of  Yorkshire  Life,  and  The  First  Duty  of  Woman.  The  last 
thirty  years  of  her  life  were  spent  at  Gomersal,  near  her  early 
home.  Here  she  died  in  1893.  Miss  Taylor  refused  to  say 
anything  about  Charlotte  Bronte  during  the  twenty  later  years 
of  her  life  and  she  destroyed  all  her  friend's  letters. 

2  In  Mrs.  Gaskell's  Life,  Sir  Wemyss  Reid*s  Monograph, 
and  in  Charlotte  Bronte  and  her  Circle.  There  were  over  five 
hundred  letters  in  all. 


SCHOOLDAYS  35 

she  grows  to  womanhood;  it  is  to  Mary  Taylor, 
however,  that  we  owe  the  first  impression  of  her  in 
these  years  at  Roe  Head: — 

''  I  first  saw  her  coming  out  of  a  covered  cart, 
in  very  old-fashioned  clothes,  and  looking  very  cold 
and  miserable.  She  was  coming  to  school  at  Miss 
Wooler's.  When  she  appeared  in  the  schoolroom 
her  dress  was  changed,  but  just  as  old.  She  looked 
a  little  old  woman,  so  shortsighted  that  she  always 
appeared  to  be  seeking  something,  and  moving  her 
head  from  side  to  side  to  catch  a  sight  of  it.  She 
was  very  shy  and  nervous,  and  spoke  with  a  strong 
Irish  accent.  When  a  book  was  given  to  her  she 
dropped  her  head  over  it  till  her  nose  nearly 
touched  it,  and  when  she  was  told  to  hold  her  head 
up,  up  went  the  book  after  it,  still  close  to  her  nose, 
so  that  it  was  not  possible  to  help  laughing."  ^ 

Mary  Taylor  goes  on  to  describe  the  growth  of 
her  friendship  with  Miss  Bronte,  the  keen  political 
arguments  that  took  place — for  they  were  at  school 
together  in  the  year  of  the  great  Reform  Bill. 

^  From  a  letter  written  by  Mary  Taylor  from  New  Zealand 
to  Mrs.  Gaskell. 


S6  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

This  was  really  a  very  happy  time  in  Charlotte 
Bronte's  life.  She  was  devoted  to  her  two  friends, 
kindly  disposed  to  the  rest  of  her  schoolfellows, 
and  attached  to  Miss  Wooler.  The  school  was 
small  enough  for  her  nervous,  shy  temperament 
not  to  give  her  much  concern,  her  holidays  were 
passed  at  her  friends'  homes  In  the  neighbourhood, 
her  childhood's  griefs,  the  loss  of  her  elder  sisters, 
were  too  remote,  and  there  was  at  this  time  no 
premonition  of  trouble  to  come.  She  loved  paint- 
ing and  drawing,  and  there  are  very  many  speci- 
mens of  her  work  extant  that  are  of  this  period. 
They  are  not,  however,  of  great  merit.  It  was  as 
an  artist  In  words  that  Charlotte  Bronte  was  to 
excel.  To  Roe  Head  also  she  owed  a  fair  knowl- 
edge of  French,  as  a  translation  by  her  of  the  first 
book  of  Voltaire's  Henriade  ^  indicates.  With 
French  as  a  spoken  language  she  was  to  become 
acquainted  by-and-by,  as  we  shall  see.  Suffice  to 
say  that  she  went  back  to  Haworth  and  to  her 
family  circle  with  a  fairly  presentable  equipment 
for  a  girl  of  sixteen  who  had  to  "  coach  "  her 
^  In  the  possession  of  the  present  writer. 


SCHOOLDAYS  37 

younger  sisters  and  assist  In  many  ways  to  make 
the  vicar's  slender  stipend  go  as  far  as  possible. 

In  the  middle  of  1832,  then,  Charlotte  Bronte 
returned  to  Haworth,  and  her  life  there  Is  best 
presented  In  an  extract  from  a  letter  to  Ellen 
Nussey : — 

"  You  ask  me  to  give  you  a  description  of  the 
manner  In  which  I  have  passed  every  day  since  I 
left  school.  This  Is  soon  done,  as  an  account  of 
one  day  Is  an  account  of  all.  In  the  mornings  from 
nine  o'clock  to  half-past  twelve  I  Instruct  my  sisters 
and  draw,  then  we  walk  till  dinner;  after  dinner  I 
sew  tin  tea-time,  and  after  tea  I  either  read,  write, 
do  a  little  fancy-work,  or  draw,  as  I  please.  Thus 
In  one  delightful,  though  monotonous  course,  my 
life  Is  passed.  I  have  only  been  out  to  tea  twice 
since  I  came  home.  We  are  expecting  company 
this  afternoon,  and  on  Tuesday  next  we  shall  have 
all  the  female  teachers  of  the  Sunday  school  to 


tea." 


This  letter  was  written  In  1832,  and  so  three 
years  were  allowed  to  pass,  their  only  tangible  rec- 
ords for  us  to-day  being  certain  drawings  that  bear 


38  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

the  dates  of  this  period,  and  certain  little  manu- 
scripts not  greatly  superior  to  those  of  the  earlier 
childhood  years,  and  giving  no  promise  whatever 
of  the  literary  success  that  was  ultimately  to  come. 
The  manuscripts  of  these  later  years  were  mainly 
written  in  verse  form. 

In  1835  Mr.  Bronte  and  his  family  apparently 
held  a  committee  of  ways  and  means.  The  children 
were  growing  up,  and  a  grown-up  family  of  three 
girls  and  one  boy  could  not  be  expected  permanent- 
ly to  occupy  the  not  very  commodious  parsonage. 
Branwell,  moreover,  was  to  be  an  artist,  which  in- 
volved expense.  He  was  to  go  to  London  to  study 
at  the  Royal  Academy  Schools,  and  his  sisters  real- 
ized that  they  also  should  think  of  some  occupa- 
tion, and  thus  relieve  the  family  exchequer.  Char- 
lotte's turn  came  first.  In  July  1835  she  returned 
to  Miss  Wooler's  school  at  Roe  Head  as  a  govern- 
ess, the  warm  friendship  that  she  had  ever  felt  for 
her  old  schoolmistress  justifying  the  supposition 
that  here  would  be  the  career  with  the  least  possible 
chance  of  failure. 


CHAPTER    VI 
GOVERNESS   LIFE 

Charlotte  returned  to  Roe  Head  as  a  govern- 
ess in  July  1835,  and  she  was  accompanied  by  her 
sister  Emily,  who  entered  the  school  as  a  pupil. 
She  writes  as  follows  concerning  her  plans,  to  her 
friend  Miss  Nussey : — 

"  I  had  hoped  to  have  had  the  extreme  pleasure 
of  seeing  you  at  Haworth  this  summer,  but  human 
affairs  are  mutable  and  human  resolutions  must 
bend  to  the  course  of  events.  We  are  all  about  to 
divide,  break  up,  separate.  Emily  is  going  to 
school,  Branwell  is  going  to  London,  and  I  am  go- 
ing to  be  a  governess.  This  last  determination  I 
formed  myself,  knowing  I  should  have  to  take  the 
step  sometime,  and  '  better  sune  as  syne  '  to  use  the 
Scotch  proverb ;  and  knowing  well  that  papa  would 
have  enough  to  do  with  his  limited  Income  should 
Branwell  be  placed  at  the  Royal  Academy  and 
Emily  at  Roe  Head.    Where  am  I  going  to  reside? 

39 


40  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

you  will  ask.  Within  four  miles  of  yourself,  dear- 
est, at  a  place  neither  of  us  are  unacquainted  with, 
being  no  other  than  the  identical  Roe  Head  men- 
tioned above.  Yes,  I  am  going  to  teach  in  the  very 
school  where  I  was  myself  taught.  Miss  Wooler 
made  me  the  offer,  and  I  preferred  it  to  one  or  two 
proposals  of  private  governess-ship,  which  I  had 
before  received.  I  am  sad,  very  sad,  at  the  thought 
of  leaving  home,  but  duty,  necessity,  these  are  stern 
mistresses  who  will  not  be  disobeyed.  Did  I  not 
once  say,  Ellen,  you  ought  to  be  thankful  for  your 
independence?  I  felt  what  I  said  at  the  time,  and 
I  repeat  it  now  with  double  earnestness;  if  anything 
would  cheer  me,  it  is  the  idea  of  being  so  near  you. 
Surely  you  and  Polly  will  come  and  see  me;  it 
would  be  wrong  in  me  to  doubt  it ;  you  were  never 
unkind  yet.  Emily  and  I  leave  home  on  the  29th 
of  this  month;  the  idea  of  being  together  consoles 
us  both  somewhat,  and  in  truth,  since  I  must  enter 
a  situation,  '  my  lines  have  fallen  in  pleasant 
places.'  I  both  love  and  respect  Miss  Wooler. 
What  did  you  mean,  Ellen,  by  saying  that  you 
knew  the  reason  why  I  wished  to  have  a  letter  from 


•3  ^ 


GOVERNESS   LIFE  41 

your  sister  Mercy?  The  sentence  hurt  me,  though 
I  did  not  quite  understand  It.  My  only  rea- 
son was  a  desire  to  correspond  with  a  person  I 
have  a  regard  for.  Give  my  love  both  to  her  and 
to  S.,  and  Miss  Nussey." 

Charlotte  Bronte's  governess  period  Is  however 
the  least  pleasant  to  survey  of  any  aspect  of  her 
life.  She  was  111  adapted  for  the  position  of  look- 
ing after  a  miscellaneous  crowd  of  girls.  She  hated 
the  work,  and  she  had  a  bitter  tongue  when  facing 
all  the  petty  discomforts  of  such  a  position.  Still 
less  was  she  suited  for  her  after-posltlon  of  a  nur- 
sery governess.  Great  animal  spirits.  Immense 
self-confidence,  all  the  qualities  that  made  this  ever 
arduous  career  possible  although  rarely  pleasant, 
were  utterly  lacking  to  this  shy  retiring  woman. 

Charlotte  Bronte  was  little  more  than  nineteen 
years  of  age  when  she  went  to  Roe  Head  as  gov- 
erness. The  year  following  Miss  Wooler  removed 
her  school  to  Dewsbury.  This  was  just  before  the 
Christmas  of  1836.  Charlotte  was  but  a  year  at 
this  latter  place  when  she  returned  home,  broken 
In  health  and  spirits. 


42  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

Emily,  now  aged  seventeen,  went  with  her  sister 
as  we  have  stated.  After  three  months,  however, 
she  utterly  broke  down  with  this  constant  contact 
with  strangers,  and  went  back  to  Haworth,  Anne 
taking  her  place  in  the  school  as  a  pupil. 

There  is  nothing  to  add  to  what  has  already  been 
printed  again  and  again  concerning  this  period. 
What  we  know  of  it  we  owe  to  her  two  friends, 
Ellen  Nussey  and  Mary  Taylor.  With  both  she 
corresponded  regularly,  and  her  Sundays  were  fre- 
quently spent  at  the  house  of  one  or  the  other. 

Ellen  Nussey  had  her  home  at  this  time  and  un- 
til 1837  at  The  Rydings,  near  Birstall,  a  beautiful 
house  in  its  own  grounds  which  young  Branwell 
Bronte  described  when  he  visited  it  as  "  paradise." 
It  doubtless  meant  something  in  her  development 
that  at  an  impressionable  age  Charlotte  should 
have  been  introduced  occasionally  to  a  prosper- 
ous, and  even  luxurious  environment.  She  loved 
Ellen  Nussey,  moreover,  although  she  had  no 
common  ground  of  intellectual  interest.  Her  let- 
ters to  her  are  frequent,  and  they  are  always  affec- 
tionate.    But  she  has  herself  well  described  the 


GOVERNESS    LIFE  43 

limitations  of  the  friendship  in  a  letter  to  a  later 
friend : — 

"  True  friendship  is  no  gourd,  springing  up  in 
a  night  and  withering  In  a  day.  When  I  first  saw 
Ellen  I  did  not  care  for  her;  we  were  schoolfel- 
lows. In  course  of  time  we  learnt  each  other's 
faults  and  good  points.  We  were  contrasts — still, 
we  suited.  Affection  was  first  a  germ,  then  a  sap- 
ling, then  a  strong  tree — now,  no  new  friend,  how- 
ever lofty  or  profound  in  intellect,  not  even  Miss 
Martlneau  herself — could  be  to  me  what  Ellen  Is; 
yet  she  is  no  more  than  a  conscientious,  observant, 
calm,  well-bred  Yorkshire  girl.  She  Is  without  ro- 
mance. If  she  attempts  to  read  poetry,  or  poetic 
prose,  aloud,  I  am  irritated  and  deprive  her  of  the 
book;  If  she  talks  of  It,  I  stop  my  ears;  but  she  Is 
good;  she  Is  true;  she  is  faithful,  and  I  love  her."  ^ 

Of  more  importance  however  In  Miss  Bronte's 
Intellectual  growth  was  her  friendship  with  Mary 
Taylor,  the  ''  dear  Polly  "  and  "  dear  Pag  "  of 
many  a  letter  unhappily  destroyed.     One  would 

^  Letter  to  W.  S.  Williams  in  Charlotte  Bronte  and  Her  Circle, 
page  205. 


44  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

gladly  have  possessed  a  clearer  picture  than  exists 
of  that  other  home  into  which  Charlotte  was  wel- 
comed in  these  dreary,  governess  days.  The  Tay- 
lors are,  however,  well  depicted  in  the  Yorkes,  of 
Shirley,  It  was  a  pleasant  house,  this  at  Gomersal, 
and  It  may  still  be  seen  from  the  road  from  which 
It  Is  separated  by  a  high  brick  wall.  Here  Mr. 
Taylor's  family  dwelt  for  many  years,  and  when 
the  young  governess  entered  the  circle  we  may  be 
sure  that  argument  waxed  fast  and  furious.  For 
Charlotte  Bronte  was  "  Church  "  to  the  backbone, 
and  "  State  "  as  understood  by  the  followers  of 
Wellington  equally  to  the  backbone,  while  the  Tay- 
lor family  were  Dissenters  and  Democrats.  From 
those  days  onward  it  is  clear  that  a  larger  religious 
toleration,  a  larger  human  sympathy  than  she  had 
hitherto  known  gathered  In  Charlotte  Bronte's 
mind,  and  Mary  Taylor  must  have  been  mainly  In- 
strumental In  giving  her  this.  "  Mary  alone,"  she 
says  in  one  of  her  letters,  "  has  more  energy  and 
power  In  her  nature  than  any  ten  men  you  can  pick 
out  In  the  united  parishes  of  Birstall  and  Ha- 
worth."    Or  we  may  take  this  other  picture  where 


GOVERNESS   LIFE  45 

she  is  presented  as  Rose  Yorke  In  Shirley: — 
''  Rose  is  a  still,  and  sometimes  a  stubborn  girl 
now;  her  mother  wants  to  make  of  her  such  a 
woman  as  she  is  herself — a  woman  of  dark  and 
dreary  duties ;  and  Rose  has  a  mind  full-set,  thick- 
sown,  with  the  germs  of  ideas  her  mother  never 
knew.  It  is  agony  to  her  often  to  have  these  ideas 
trampled  on  and  repressed.  She  has  never  re- 
belled yet;  but  if  hard  driven,  she  will  rebel  one 
day,  and  then  it  will  be  once  for  all." 

The  Christmas  holidays  of  1836  were  spent  at 
home,  at  Haworth,  and  even  then  some  kind  of  lit- 
erary aspirations  must  have  begun  with  the  young 
people,  for  we  find  Charlotte  corresponding  with 
Southey,  then  Poet  Laureate.  We  find  Branwell 
Bronte  also  writing  letters  to  the  Editor  of  Black- 
wood's Magazine  begging  for  the  insertion  of  his 
contributions,  and  sending  to  Wordsworth  drafts 
of  his  projected  books.  When  the  Christmas  holi- 
days were  over  Charlotte  returned  to  the  Inevitable 
''  grind,"  as  she  called  It,  not  this  time  to  Roe 
Head  but  to  the  new  school-house  at  Dewsbury 
Moor.     In  March  of  1837  she  obtained  a  long- 


46  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

delayed  answer  from  Southey — a  kind  and  consid- 
erate letter  from  a  busy  man  to  a  stranger — advis- 
ing that  she  should  not  think  about  literature.  A 
fragment  of  her  reply  is  worth  printing : — 

*'  My  father  is  a  clergyman  of  limited  though 
competent  income,  and  I  am  the  eldest  of  his  chil- 
dren. He  expended  quite  as  much  in  my  education 
as  he  could  afford  in  justice  to  the  rest.  I  thought 
it  therefore  my  duty,  when  I  left  school,  to  become 
a  governess.  In  that  capacity  I  find  enough  to  oc- 
cupy my  thoughts  all  day  long,  and  my  head  and 
hands  too,  without  having  a  moment's  time  for  one 
dream  of  the  imagination.  In  the  evenings,  I  con- 
fess, I  do  think,  but  I  never  trouble  any  one  else 
with  my  thoughts.  I  carefully  avoid  any  appear- 
ance of  preoccupation  and  eccentricity,  which 
might  lead  those  I  live  amongst  to  suspect  the  na- 
ture of  my  pursuits.  Following  my  father's  ad- 
vice— who  from  my  childhood  has  counselled  me, 
just  in  the  wise  and  friendly  tone  of  your  letter — 
I  have  endeavoured  not  only  attentively  to  observe 
all  the  duties  a  woman  ought  to  fulfil,  but  to  feel 
deeply  interested  in  them.     I  don't  always  sue- 


GOVERNESS   LIFE  47 

ceed,  for  sometimes  when  I'm  teaching  or  sewing  I 
would  rather  be  reading  or  writing;  but  I  try  to 
deny  myself;  and  my  father's  approbation  amply 
rewarded  me  for  the  privation.  Once  more  allow 
me  to  thank  you  with  sincere  gratitude.  I  trust  I 
shall  never  more  feel  ambitious  to  see  my  name  in 
print;  if  the  wish  should  rise,  I'll  look  at  Southey's 
letter,  and  suppress  it."  ^ 

At  the  end  of  1837,  as  the  Christmas  holidays 
were  coming  on,  Charlotte  had  a  "  breeze  "  with 
Miss  Wooler  concerning  her  sister  Anne,  who  was 
still  a  pupil  at  the  school.  Robust  in  health  her- 
self, Miss  Wooler  perhaps  took  little  account  of 
the  ailments  of  others.  Anne  had  what  to  the 
schoolmistress  was  merely  a  slight  cold ;  to  her  de- 
voted sister  it  was  much  more,  and  Charlotte  was 
right;  it  was  doubtless  the  beginning  of  that  con- 
sumption which  was  all  too  soon  to  end  her  sister's 
life.  The  alienation  was  but  temporary,  and  Miss 
Wooler  and  her  pupil  parted  the  best  of  friends. 
Charlotte  and  Anne  went  home,  and  the  latter  did 

^  See  Southey's  Life,  vol.  vi.  pp.  329-30,  for  two  letters  from 
Southey  to  Charlotte  Bronte. 


48  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

not  again  return  to  Dewsbury.  The  three  sisters 
were  together  for  a  time.  Charlotte  returned 
alone  to  Dewsbury  after  the  Christmas  holidays, 
but  at  the  beginning  of  June,  1838,  she  went  back 
to  Haworth,  "  a  shattered  wreck,''  as  she  described 
herself  in  a  letter  to  one  of  her  friends. 

It  was  but  a  few  months  after  this,  while  still  at 
home  at  Haworth,  she  received  her  first  offer  of 
marriage — from  a  clergyman,  Henry  Nussey,  the 
brother  of  her  friend  Ellen.  He  was  at  this  time 
Curate  of  Donnlngton  in  Sussex;  he  afterwards 
became  Rector  of  Hathersage  in  Derbyshire,  and 
here  Charlotte  Bronte  spent  a  memorable  three 
weeks'  holiday  with  Ellen  Nussey  some  time  later, 
with  the  result  that  she  was  able  to  introduce 
an  element  of  Derbyshire  scenery  into  her  books.^ 
Charlotte  Bronte  went  to  stay  at  Hathersage  with 
her  friend  Ellen  while  the  vicar  was  on  his  honey- 
moon, for  it  did  not  take  him  long  to  recover  from 
the  blow  of  Miss  Bronte's  rejection  of  his  suit. 
He  had  indeed  told  her  frankly  enough  that  he 

^  In  Hathersage  Church  is  an  altar  tomb  to  Robert  Eyre, 
who  fought  at  Agincourt,  and  to  his  wife,  Joan  Eyre.  Hather- 
sage is  of  course  the  village  of  Morton  of  Jane  Eyre. 


GOVERNESS   LIFE  49 

wanted  some  one  to  look  after  his  housekeeping, 
and  Charlotte  had  sufficient  romance  in  her  com- 
position to  feel  that  this  was  not  quite  an  adequate 
courtship.  That  she  had  her  own  strong  views  on 
the  subject  is  shown  by  a  letter  which  I  print  here, 
written  soon  afterwards  to  a  friend  whose  love- 
affair  also  came  to  nothing.  It  is  dated  November 
20,  1840. 

"  That  last  letter  of  thine  treated  of  matters  so 
high  and  important  I  cannot  delay  answering  It  for 
a  day.  Now,  Ellen,  I  am  about  to  write  thee  a 
discourse  and  a  piece  of  advice  which  thou  must 
take  as  If  It  came  from  thy  grandmother,  but  In  the 
first  place,  before  I  begin  with  thee,  I  have  a  word 
to  whisper  In  the  ear  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  and  I  wish  it 
could  reach  him. 

"  In  the  name  of  St.  Chrysostom,  St.  Simeon  and 
St.  Jude,  why  does  not  that  amiable  young  gentle- 
man come  fon\'^ard  like  a  man  and  say  all  he  has  to 
say  to  yourself  personally,  instead  of  trifling  with 
kinsmen  and  kinswomen?  Mr.  Lincoln,  I  say, 
walk  or  ride  over  to  Brookny  some  fine  morning, 
where  you  will  find  Miss  Ellen  sitting  in  the  draw- 


JO  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

ing  room  making  a  little  white  frock  for  the  Jew's 
basket,  and  say,  '  Miss  Ellen,  I  want  to  speak  to 
you.'  Miss  Ellen  will  of  course  civilly  answer, 
'  I'm  at  your  service,  Mr.  Lincoln,'  and  then  when 
the  room  is  cleared  of  all  but  yourself  and  herself, 
just  take  a  chair  near  her,  insist  upon  her  laying 
down  that  silly  Jew  basket  work,  and  listening  to 
yoUf  then  begin  in  a  clear,  distinct,  deferential  but 
determined  voice — '  Miss  Ellen,  I  have  a  question 
to  put  to  you,  a  very  important  question — will  you 
take  me  as  your  husband,  for  better,  for  worse? 
I  am  not  a  rich  man,  but  I  have  sufficient  to  support 
us,  I  am  not  a  great  man,  but  I  love  you  honestly 
and  truly.  Miss  Ellen,  if  you  knew  the  world  bet- 
ter you  would  see  that  this  is  an  offer  not  to  be  de- 
spised— a  kind  attached  heart,  and  a  moderate 
competency.'  Do  this,  Mr.  Lincoln,  and  you  may 
succeed;  go  on  writing  sentimental  and  love-sick 
letters  to  Henry,  and  I  would  not  give  sixpence  for 
your  suit. 

"  So  much  for  Mr.  Lincoln.  Now,  Ellen,  your 
turn  comes  to  swallow  the  black  bolus — called  a 
friendly  advice.     Here  I  am  under  difficulties,  be- 


GOVERNESS   LIFE  51 

cause  I  don't  know  Mr.  Lincoln;  if  I  did  I  would 
give  you  my  opinion  roundly  in  two  words.  Is  the 
man  a  fool?  Is  he  a  knave  or  humbug,  a  hypo- 
crite, a  ninny,  a  noodle?  If  he  is  any  or  all  of 
these  things  of  course  there  is  no  sense  in  trifling 
with  him — cut  him  short  at  once,  blast  his  hopes 
with  lightning  rapidity  and  keenness. 

*'  Is  he  something  better  than  this?  Has  he  at 
least  common  sense,  a  good  disposition,  a  manage- 
able temper?  Then,  Ellen,  consider  the  matter. 
You  feel  a  disgust  towards  him  now,  an  utter  re- 
pugnance, very  likely,  but  be  so  good  as  to  remem- 
ber you  don't  know  him,  you  have  only  had  three 
or  four  days'  acquaintance  with  him;  longer  and 
closer  intimacy  might  reconcile  you  to  a  wonderful 
extent.  And  now  I'll  tell  you  a  word  of  truth  at 
which  you  may  be  offended  or  not  as  you  like. 
From  what  I  know  of  your  character,  and  I  think 
I  know  it  pretty  well,  I  should  say  you  will  never 
love  before  marriage.  After  that  ceremony  is 
over,  and  after  you  have  had  some  months  to  settle 
down,  and  to  get  accustomed  to  the  creature  you 
have  taken  for  your  worse  half,  you  will  probably 


52  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

make  a  most  affectionate  and  happy  wife,  even  if 
the  individual  should  not  prove  all  you  could  wish, 
you  will  be  indulgent  towards  his  little  foibles  and 
will  not  feel  much  annoyance  at  them.  This  will 
especially  be  the  case  If  he  should  have  sense  suffi- 
cient to  allow  you  to  guide  him  In  important  mat- 
ters. Such  being  the  case,  Ellen,  I  hope  you  will 
not  have  the  romantic  folly  to  wait  for  the  waken- 
ing of  what  the  French  call  '  Une  Grande  Passion  J 
My  good  girl,  '  Une  grande  passion '  is  *  une 
grande  F  jlie.'  I  have  told  you  so  before,  and  I 
tell  It  you  again.  Moderation  in  all  things  is  wis- 
dom. V  hen  you  are  as  old  as  I  am  (I  am  sixty  at 
least,  be'ng  your  grandmother)  you  will  find  that 
the  maiority  of  those  worldly  precepts,  whose 
seeming  coldness  shocks  and  repels  us  in  youth,  are 
founded  Jn  wisdom.  Did  you  not  once  say  to  me  in 
all  chi]  alike  simplicity,  '  I  thought,  Charlotte,  no 
young  ladles  should  fall  In  love  till  the  offer  was 
actually  made?  '  I  forget  what  answer  I  made  at 
the  t»  le,  but  I  now  reply  after  due  consideration, 
*  Rigiit  as  a  glove,  the  maxim  is  just,  and  I  hope 
you  will  always  attend  to  It.'     I  will  even  extend 


GOVERNESS   LIFE  S3 

and  confirm  it — no  young  lady  should  fall  in  love 
till  the  offer  has  been  made,  accepted,  the  marriage 
ceremony  performed,  and  the  first  half-year  of 
wedded  life  has  passed  away;  a  woman  may  then 
begin  to  love,  but  with  very  great  precaution,  very 
coolly,  very  moderately,  very  rationally.  If  she 
ever  loves  so  much  that  a  harsh  word  or  a  cold 
look  from  her  husband  cuts  her  to  the  heart,  she  is 
a  fool — if  she  ever  loves  so  much  thfet  her  hus- 
band's will  is  her  law,  and  that  she  has -got  into  a 
habit  of  watching  his  look  in  order  that  she  may 
anticipate  his  wishes,  she  will  soon  be  a  neglected 
fool.  Did  I  not  once  tell  you  of  an  inst^,nce  of  a 
relative  of  mine  who  cared  for  a  young  Indy  until 
he  began  to  suspect  that  she  cared  more  for  him 
and  then  instantly  conceived  a  sort  of  contempt  for 
her?  You  know  to  whom  I  allude — never  as  you 
value  your  ears  mention  the  circumstance^— but  I 
have  two  studies,  you  are  my  study  for  the^success, 
the  credit,  and  the  respectability  of  a  quiet  tranquil 
character.  Mary  is  my  study — for  the  con^fempt, 
the  remorse,  the  misconstruction  which  follcV  the 
development  of  feelings  in  themselves  noble,  warm. 


54  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

generous,  devoted  and  profound,  but  which  being 
too  freely  revealed,  too  frankly  bestowed,  are  not 
estimated  at  their  real  value.  God  bless  her,  I 
never  hope  to  see  in  this  world  a  character  more 
truly  noble — she  would  die  willingly  for  one  she 
loved,  her  intellect  and  her  attainments  are  of  the 
highest  standard.  Yet  I  doubt  whether  Mary  will 
ever  marry. 

"  I  think  I  may  as  well  conclude  the  letter,  for 
after  all  I  can  give  you  no  advice  worth  receiving, 
all  I  have  to  say  may  be  comprised  in  a  very  brief 
sentence.  On  one  hand  don't  accept  if  you  are 
certain  you  cannot  tolerate  the  man — on  the  other 
hand  don't  refuse  because  you  cannot  adore  him. 

As  to  little  Walter  M ,  I  think  he  will  not  die 

of  love  of  anybody — ^you  might  safely  coquette 
with  him  a  trifle  if  you  were  so  disposed  without 
fear  of  having  a  broken  heart  on  your  conscience. 
His  reverence  expresses  himself  very  strongly  on 
the  subject  of  young  ladies  saying  *  No  '  when  they 
mean  '  Yes.'  He  assures  me  he  means  nothing  per- 
'  sonal.  I  hope  not.  I  tried  to  find  something  ad- 
mirable in  him  and  failed. 


GOVERNESS   LIFE  55 

"  Assuredly  I  quite  agree  with  him  in  his  disap- 
probation of  such  a  senseless  course.  It  is  folly 
indeed  for  the  tongue  to  stammer  a  negative  when 
the  heart  is  proclaiming  an  affirmative.  Or  rather 
it  is  an  act  of  heroic  self-denial  of  which  I  for  one 
confess  myself  wholly  incapable.  /  would  not  tell 
such  a  lie  to  gain  a  thousand  pounds.  Write  to 
me  again  soon  and  let  me  know  how  it  all 
goes  on."  ^ 

Instead  of  plunging  into  matrimony,  Charlotte 
Bronte  twice  entered  upon  the  duties  of  a  govern- 
ess in  a  private  family.  Her  first  "  situation,"  as 
she  calls  it,  was  with  a  Mrs.  Sidgwick,  and  we  find 
her  in  June  1839  writing  to  her  sister  Emily  from 
the  Sidgwick  family  mansion  at  Stonegappe  in 
Yorkshire,  explaining  that  her  life  there  was  thor- 
oughly hateful  to  her.  Mr.  A.  C.  Benson,  the 
well-known  critic  and  a  cousin  of  the  Sidgwicks, 
has  epitomised  the  situation  when  he  says  that 
she  clearly  had  no  gifts  for  the  management 
of  children;  and  also  that  she  was  In  a  very  mor- 

^  See  Appendix  for  other  letters. 


56  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

bid  condition  the  whole  time  she  was  at  Stone- 
gappe.i 

She  seems  to  have  been  happier  when,  after  a 
few  months  at  home,  she  took  up  a  second  situa- 
tion as  governess  In  the  family  of  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
White  at  Upperwood  House,  Rawdon,  Yorkshire, 
where  she  had  only  two  pupils,  a  girl  of  eight  and 
a  boy  of  six;  and  where  certainly  the  father  of  the 
family  did  his  best  now  and  hereafter  to  prove  him- 
self a  friend  to  Miss  Bronte.  It  was  he  doubtless 
who  assisted  with  his  advice  in  the  scheme  for  go- 
ing abroad,  the  enterprise  which  was  the  turning- 
point  in  Charlotte  Bronte's  career,  and  which  un- 
doubtedly made  her  the  famous  author  she  event- 
ually became. 

^  Life  of  Edward  White  Benson,  sometime  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  by  A.  C.  Benson.  Mr.  Benson  asserts  that  one  of 
the  children  told  him  that  if  Miss  Bronte  was  desired  to  accom- 
pany them  to  church — "Oh,  Miss  Bronte,  do  run  up  and  put  on 
your  things,  we  want  to  start " — she  was  plunged  in  dudgeon 
because  she  was  being  treated  as  a  hireling.  If,  in  consequence, 
she  was  not  invited  to  accompany  them,  she  was  infinitely  de- 
pressed because  she  was  treated  as  an  outcast  and  a  friendless 
dependent. 


CHAPTER    VII 

THE   PENSION   HEGER,   BRUSSELS 

It  is  In  my  judgment  exceedingly  probable  that 
had  not  circumstances  led  Charlotte  Bronte  to 
spend  some  time  in  Brussels,  the  world  would  never 
have  heard  of  her  and  of  her  sisters.  Charlotte 
was  nearly  twenty-six  years  of  age  when  she  went 
on  the  Continent,  and  she  had  accomplished  noth- 
ing noteworthy.  She  had  indeed  written  copiously 
In  prose  and  verse,  but  her  work  will  not  bear  any 
critical  examination.  Let  It  be  remembered  that 
she  was  of  an  age  at  which  Fanny  Burney  had  al- 
ready won  renown  with  Evelina.  At  twenty-two 
Jane  Austen  had  written  Pride  and  Prejudice,  and 
Sense  and  Sensibility,  two  supremely  great  novels. 
Before  John  Keats  had  reached  these  years  he  had 
written  his  many  immortal  poems,  and  had  gone 
to  his  grave.  One  has  only  to  compare  with  the 
achievement  of  many  of  her  peers  in  literature  what 

SI 


58  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

Miss  Bronte  had  accomplished  up  to  this  time,  in 
spite  of  much  strenuous  literary  ambition.  Some 
of  her  earlier  work  has  been  printed,  not  on  account 
of  its  merits,  but  through  the  rashness  of  hero-wor- 
ship, and  much  of  it,  still  in  manuscript,  may  be 
examined  by  the  curious.^  Not  the  most  lenient  of 
critics  can  here  discover  the  least  suggestion  of  the 
genius  that  was  to  find  its  earliest  expression  in 
The  Professor,  the  novel  in  which  our  author  first 
attempted  to  woo  the  publishers  and  in  which  she 
also  first  described  the  entirely  new  world  wherein 
her  soul  had  been  unbound.  The  sojourn  in  Brus- 
sels, I  suggest  again,  made  Miss  Bronte  an  author. 
It  had  long  been  the  desire  of  the  three  girls  to 
set  up  school  on  their  own  account  in  the  Haworth 
Parsonage.  Each  in  turn  had  found  her  work  as 
governess  a  position  of  absolute  tragedy.  Anne 
had  held  two  such  situations,  Emily  one,  and 
Charlotte,  as  we  have  seen,  also  two.     To  Emily 

^  There  are  MSS.  in  the  British  Museum  and  in  the  Bronte 
Museum,  Haworth.  See  also  The  Adventures  of  Ernest  Alem- 
bert,  a  fairy  tale  by  Charlotte  Bronte,  edited  by  Thomas  J.  Wise, 
1896;  and  Poems  by  Charlotte^  Emily  and  Anne  Bronte^  now  for 
the  first  time  printed y  Dodd,  Mead  &  Co.,  1902. 


THE  PENSION  HEGER,  BRUSSELS     59 

the  thing  must  have  been  an  unmitigated  tragedy, 
and  to  all  of  them  it  was  clearly  unendurable.  It 
was  during  this  time  that  the  school  project  was 
first  mooted,  and  Charlotte  wrote  to  her  friend 
Ellen  Nussey — 

"  You  will  not  mention  our  school  scheme  at 
present.  A  project  not  actually  commenced  is  al- 
ways uncertain.  ...  I  have  one  aching  feeling 
at  my  heart  ( I  must  allude  to  it,  though  I  had  re- 
solved not  to) .  It  is  about  Anne;  she  has  so  much 
to  endure :  far,  far  more  than  I  have.  When  my 
thoughts  turn  to  her,  they  always  see  her  as  a  pa- 
tient, persecuted  stranger.  I  know  what  concealed 
susceptibility  is  in  her  nature  when  her  feelings  are 
wounded.  I  wish  I  could  be  with  her,  to  adminis- 
ter a  little  balm.  She  is  more  lonely,  less  gifted 
with  the  power  of  making  friends,  even  than 
I  am." 

There  would  be  more  freedom  in  a  home  school, 
but  then  every  one,  with  candid  friendship,  called 
attention  to  the  fact  that  without  "  languages  "  an 
independent  position  as  school-mistress  was  out  of 


6o  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

the  question.  Some  of  their  old  school  friends  had 
been  to  Brussels.  Two  of  them,  Mary  and  Mar- 
tha Taylor,  were  there  at  the  time,  but  meanwhile 
there  were  some  who  strongly  advised  an  "  Institu- 
tion "  at  Lille.  Finally,  however,  Brussels  was  de- 
cided on.  A  little  earlier,  writing  from  her  gover- 
ness post  at  Mrs.  White's,  Charlotte  had  made  an 
urgent  appeal  to  the  aunt  to  advance  them  some 
money.  Miss  Branwell  had  already  promised  her 
nieces  the  loan  of  £ioo  from  her  savings  for  the 
school  project,  in  order  that  furniture  might  be 
bought,  circulars  printed,  and  so  on.  Why  not, 
Charlotte  asks  her  aunt,  advance  the  money  to  help 
us  in  Brussels?  "  In  half  a  year,"  she  says,  "  I 
could  acquire  a  thorough  familiarity  with  French. 
I  could  improve  greatly  in  Italian,  and  even  get  a 
dash  of  German."  The  end  of  the  letter  is  worth 
quoting  in  full — 

"  I  feel  an  absolute  conviction  that,  if  this  ad- 
vantage were  allowed  us,  it  would  be  the  making 
of  us  for  life.  Papa  will  perhaps  think  it  a  wild 
and  ambitious  scheme;  but  who  ever  rose  in  the 
world  without  ambition  ?    When  he  left  Ireland  to 


THE  PENSION  H^GER,  BRUSSELS     6i 

go  to  Cambridge  University,  he  was  as  ambitious 
as  I  am  now.  I  want  us  all  to  go  on.  I  know  we 
have  talents  and  I  want  them  to  be  turned  to  ac- 
count. I  look  to  you,  aunt,  to  help  us.  I  think 
you  will  not  refuse.  I  know,  if  you  consent,  it  shall 
not  be  my  fault  if  you  ever  repent  your  kindness." 

Finally  Miss  Branwell  acceded  to  her  niece's 
appeal;  the  Maison  d'Education  of  Madame 
Heger  in  the  Rue  d'Isabelle,  Brussels,  was  decided 
on,  and  Charlotte  and  Emily  went  there  in  Feb- 
ruary, 1842,  staying  for  two  days  in  London  on 
the  way.  Mr.  Bronte  accompanied  his  children  on 
this  expedition,  giving  himself  his  first  and  only 
visit  to  the  Continent,  while  It  gave  his  daughters 
their  first  view  of  London.  Mr.  Bronte  stayed  but 
one  night  in  Brussels.  The  next  morning  he  re- 
turned to  England  and  to  Haworth,  and  his  daugh- 
ters devoted  themselves  strenuously  to  their  work. 

They  found  themselves  in  a  school  once  again, 
but  now  as  pupils,  not  as  teachers;  and  in  a  way 
they  were  fairly  happy  during  their  first  six  months 
in  Brussels.  There  were  forty  day  pupils,  and 
twelve  boarders.    All  the  boarders  slept  In  one  long 


62  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

room,  which,  with  its  rows  of  little  beds,  and  its 
passage  between,  after  the  fashion  of  the  wards  of 
a  hospital  may  still  be  seen;  and  indeed  the  place 
had  its  sprinkling  of  English  pupils  until  quite  re- 
cent years.  There  are  several  Englishwomen  still 
living  who  were  pupils  of  Madame  Heger  in  the 
generations  that  followed  the  Brontes.  The  pres- 
ent writer  has  spent  more  than  one  pleasant  hour 
in  a  drawing-room  in  Bayswater  where  he  has 
heard  three  amiable  and  cultivated  gentlewomen 
recall  with  full  hearts  their  old  memories  of  the 
Pensionnat  Heger.  They  were  the  daughters  of 
a  Dr.  Wheelwright  residing  in  Brussels  for  his 
health.  One  of  them,  Laetitia,  became  very  inti- 
mate with  Charlotte,  another  and  younger  sister 
Sarah  Anne,  was  able  to  remember  certain  music 
lessons  when  Emily  was  her  instructor,  and  proved, 
as  the  child  thought,  not  too  kindly  a  teacher  to  the 
little  girl  who  indeed  as  an  adult  has  clearly  none 
of  the  admiration  for  Emily  that  she  gave  to 
Charlotte. 

There  were  two  other  English  girls  in  Brussels 
at  the  time  who  have  their  place  in  this  story: 


THE  PENSION  H^GER,  BRUSSELS     61, 

Mary  and  Martha  Taylor.  The  old  schoolfellows 
of  Dewsbury  were  not  at  the  same  school  as  Char- 
lotte, but  at  a  more  expensive  establishment,  the 
Chateau  de  Koekelberg.  Here  Martha  fell  111 
^nd^  died,  and  but  a  few  weeks  later  Charlotte  and 
-iS««lvere  hastily  summoned  home  by  the  Illness 
of  the'  aunt  to  whose  generosity  they  owed  their 
few  months  In  Brussels. 

Miss  Branwell  died  on  October  29,  1842.  Her 
two  nieces  did  not  reach  Haworth  until  the  begin- 
ning of  November.  They  found  themselves  mon- 
etarily the  richer  by  their  aunt's  death.  The  three 
girls  inherited  some  five  hundred  pounds  apiece  of 
the  old  lady's  careful  investments,  not  enough 
to  enrich  the  household  much,  as  the  aunt's  Income 
had  died  with  her,  but  sufficient  to  make  things 
easier  as  far  as  the  school  project  was  concerned. 
Now  they  need  not  go  to  Bridlington,  as  was  con- 
templated earlier.  They  might  alter  the  parson- 
age a  little,  utilize  their  aunt's  bedroom,  and  take 
at  least  two  or  three  pupils. 

But  meanwhile  Anne  had  still  a  "  situation  " 
that  had  in  it  many  advantages.    She  was  govern- 


64  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

ess  to  the  daughters  of  a  clergyman — Mr.  Robin- 
son, of  Thorpe  Green.  Why  not  let  Emily  keep 
house  and  Charlotte  be  allowed  to  spend  yet  an- 
other year  at  Brussels  in  order  to  make  herself 
more  thoroughly  proficient? 

M.  Heger  had  taken  the  keenest  interest  in  his 
pupils  and  had  written  to  their  father  expressing 
regret  at  their  hasty  departure  from  the  school. 
He  suggested  that  one  or  both  of  them  might  wish 
to  return  in  a  position  of  perfect  independence  as 
English  governess. 

It  was  this  offer  that  Charlotte  determined  to 
accept,  and  in  January,  1843,  she  set  out,  this  time 
alone,  on  her  eventful  journey,  leaving  Haworth 
on  Friday  morning,  and  reaching  Brussels  on  Sun- 
day evening.  Here  a  new  life  began.  She  was 
now  a  governess — Mademoiselle  Charlotte — with 
many  special  privileges,  working  hard  in  her  own 
time  at  German,  and  conducting  the  English  class 
besides  superintending  other  classes  at  times.  To 
the  native  governesses  she  found  herself  in  antag- 
onism— in  fact,  it  must  be  admitted  that  Mes- 
dames  Blanche,  Sophie,  and  Hausse,  her  three  col- 


THE  PENSION  HlfeCER,  BRUSSELS     65 

leagues,  were  not  merely  not  tolerated,  but  were 
hated  very  cordially.  There  were  compensations, 
however.  She  had  the  Wheelwright  family  and  a 
certain  Mary  Dixon  for  friends  in  the  city.  She 
had  also  at  the  first  the  good  will  not  only  of  M. 
Heger,  but  of  his  wife.  "  Whenever  I  turn  back," 
she  writes,  "  to  compare  what  I  am  with  what  I 
w^as,  my  place  here  with  my  place  at  Mrs.  Sidg- 
wick's,  or  Mrs.  White's,  I  am  thankful." 

Then  will  seem  to  have  come  a  change.  Writ- 
ing to  her  brother  Branwell,  she  says — 

"  Among  120  persons  which  compose  the  daily 
population  of  this  house,  I  can  discern  only  one  or 
two  who  deserve  anything  like  regard.  This  is  not 
owing  to  foolish  fastidiousness  on  my  part,  but  to 
the  absence  of  decent  qualities  on  theirs.  They 
have  not  intellect  or  politeness  or  good-nature  or 
good-feeling.  They  are  nothing.  I  don't  hate 
them — hatred  would  be  too  warm  a  feeling.  They 
have  no  sensations  themselves,  and  they  excite 
none.  But  one  wearies  from  day  to  day  of  caring 
nothing,  fearing  nothing,  liking  nothing,  hat- 
ing nothing,  being  nothing,  doing  nothing — ^yes,  I 


66  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

teach,  and  sometimes  get  red  In  the  face  with  im- 
patience at  their  stupidity.  But  don't  think  I  ever 
scold  or  fly  into  a  passion.  If  I  spoke  warmly,  as 
warmly  as  I  sometimes  used  to  do  at  Roe  Head, 
they  would  think  me  mad.  Nobody  ever  gets  into 
a  passion  here.  Such  a  thing  is  not  known.  The 
phlegm  that  thickens  their  blood  Is  too  gluey  to 
boil.  They  are  very  false  in  their  relations  with 
each  other,  but  they  rarely  quarrel,  and  friendship 
Is  a  folly  they  are  unacquainted  with.  The  black 
Swan,  M.  Heger,  is  the  only  sole  veritable  excep- 
tion to  this  rule  (for  Madame,  always  cool  and 
always  reasoning.  Is  not  quite  an  exception).  But 
I  rarely  speak  to  Monsieur  now,  for  not  being  a 
pupil  I  have  little  or  nothing  to  do  with  him. 
From  time  to  time  he  shows  his  kind-heartedness 
by  loading  me  with  books,  so  that  I  am  still  indebt- 
ed to  him  for  all  the  pleasure  or  amusement  I  have. 
Except  for  the  total  want  of  companionship  I  have 
nothing  to  complain  of."  ^ 

Still  more  melancholy  was  her  condition  by  Sep- 
tember when  she  wrote  to  her  sister  Emily  the  let- 

^  Charlotte  Bronte  and  her  Circle. 


THE  PENSION  HEGER,  BRUSSELS     67 

ter  which  told  of  her  confession  to  a  priest  of  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church,  an  Incident  so  skilfully 
made  use  of  In  her  novel  Villette — 

"  Yesterday  I  went  on  a  pilgrimage  to  the  cem- 
etery, and  far  beyond  It  on  to  a  hill  where  there 
was  nothing  but  fields  as  far  as  the  horizon.  When 
I  came  back  It  was  evening,  but  I  had  such  a  repug- 
nance to  return  to  the  house,  which  contained  noth- 
ing that  I  cared  for,  I  still  kept  threading  the 
streets  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  Rue  d'Isabelle 
and  avoiding  it.  I  found  myself  opposite  to  Ste. 
Gudule,  and  the  bell,  whose  voice  you  know,  began 
to  toll  for  evening  salut.  I  went  in,  quite  alone 
(which  procedure  you  will  say  is  not  much  like 
me),  wandered  about  the  aisles  where  a  few  old 
women  were  saying  their  prayers,  till  vespers  be- 
gan. I  stayed  till  they  were  over.  Still  I  could 
not  leave  the  church  or  force  myself  to  go  home — 
to  school,  I  mean.  An  odd  whim  came  into  my 
head.  In  a  solitary  part  of  the  cathedral  six  or 
seven  people  still  remained  kneeling  by  the  con- 
fessionals. In  two  confessionals  I  saw  a  priest.  I 
felt  as  if  I  did  not  care  what  I  did,  provided  it  was 


68  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

not  absolutely  wrong,  and  that  It  served  to  vary  my 
life  and  yield  a  moment's  interest.  I  took  a  fancy 
to  change  myself  into  a  Catholic  and  go  and  make 
a  real  confession  to  see  what  it  was  like.  Know- 
ing me  as  you  do,  you  will  think  this  odd,  but  when 
people  are  by  themselves  they  have  singular  fan- 
cies. A  penitent  was  occupied  in  confessing.  They 
do  not  go  into  the  sort  of  pew  or  cloister  which  the 
priest  occupies,  but  kneel  down  on  the  steps  and 
confess  through  a  grating.  Both  the  confessor  and 
the  penitent  whisper  very  low,  you  can  hardly 
hear  their  voices.  After  I  had  watched  two  or 
three  penitents  go  and  return  I  approached  at  last 
and  knelt  down  in  a  niche  which  was  just  vacated. 
I  had  to  kneel  there  ten  minutes  waiting,  for  on  the 
other  side  was  another  penitent  invisible  to  me.  At 
last  that  one  went  away,  and  a  little  wooden  door 
Inside  the  grating  opened,  and  I  saw  the  priest  lean- 
ing his  ear  towards  me.  I  was  obliged  to  begin, 
and  yet  I  did  not  know  a  word  of  the  formula  with 
which  they  always  commence  their  confessions.  It 
was  a  funny  position.  I  felt  precisely  as  I  did  when 
alone  on  the  Thames  at  midnight.    I  commenced 


THE  PENSION  HEGER,  BRUSSELS     69 

with  saying  I  was  a  foreigner,  and  had  been 
brought  up  a  Protestant.  The  priest  asked  if  I 
was  a  Protestant  then.  I  somehow  could  not  tell  a 
lie,  and  said  '  yes.'  He  replied  that  in  that  case  I 
could  not  '  jouir  du  bonheur  de  la  confesse; '  but 
I  was  determined  to  confess ;  and  at  last  he  said  he 
would  allow  me  because  it  might  be  the  first  step 
towards  returning  to  the  true  Church.  I  actually 
did  confess — a  real  confession.  When  I  had  done 
he  told  me  his  address,  and  said  that  every  morn- 
ing I  was  to  go  to  the  rue  du  Pare — to  his  house — 
and  he  would  reason  with  me,  and  try  to  convince 
me  of  the  error  and  enormity  of  being  a  Protes- 
tant! I  promised  faithfully  to  go.  Of  course, 
however,  the  adventure  stops  there,  and  I  hope  I 
shall  never  see  the  priest  again.  I  think  you  had 
better  not  tell  papa  of  this.  He  will  not  under- 
stand that  it  was  only  a  freak,  and  will  perhaps 
think  I  am  going  to  turn  Catholic."  ^ 

This  morbidness  increased,  and  at  the  end  of  the 
year  she  resolved  to  go  home,  her  father's  increas- 
ing tendency  to  blindness  fortifying  her  resolution. 

^  Charlotte  Bronte  and  Her  Circle. 


70  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

Armed  with  a  certificate  from  M.  Heger  that  told 
of  her  qualifications  for  teaching  the  French 
language,  she  started  for  England,  and  was 
again  in  Haworth  at  the  beginning  of  January 
1844. 
A  few  days  later  she  wrote  to  a  friend — 
"  Every  one  asks  me  what  I  am  going  to  do, 
now  that  I  am  returned  home ;  and  every  one  seems 
to  expect  that  I  should  immediately  commence  a 
school.  In  truth,  it  is  what  I  should  wish  to  do.  I 
desire  it  above  all  things.  I  have  sufficient  money 
for  the  undertaking,  and  I  hope  now  sufficient  qual- 
ifications to  give  me  a  fair  chance  of  success;  yet  I 
cannot  permit  myself  to  enter  upon  life — to  touch 
the  object  which  seems  now  within  my  reach,  and 
which  I  have  been  so  long  straining  to  attain.  You 
will  ask  me  why.  It  is  on  papa's  account;  he  is 
now,  as  you  know,  getting  old,  and  it  grieves  me  to 
tell  you  that  he  is  losing  his  sight.  I  have  felt  for 
some  months  that  I  ought  not  to  be  away  from 
him ;  and  I  feel  now  that  it  would  be  too  selfish  to 
leave  him  (at  least  as  long  as  Branwell  and  Anne 
are  absent) ,  in  order  to  pursue  selfish  interests  of 


THE  PENSION  HEGER,  BRUSSELS     71 

my  own.  With  the  help  of  God  I  will  try  to  deny 
myself  in  this  matter,  and  to  wait. 

"  I  suffered  much  before  I  left  Brussels.  I 
think,  however  long  I  live,  I  shall  not  forget  what 
the  parting  with  M.  Heger  cost  me;  it  grieved  me 
so  much  to  grieve  him,  who  has  been  so  true,  kind 
and  disinterested  a  friend.  At  parting  he  gave  me 
a  kind  of  diploma  certifying  my  abilities  as  a  teach- 
er, sealed  with  the  seal  of  the  Athenee  Royal,  of 
which  he  is  professor.  I  was  much  surprised  also 
at  the  degree  of  regret  expressed  by  my  Belgian 
pupils,  when  they  knew  I  was  going  to  leave.  I 
did  not  think  it  had  been  in  their  phlegmatic 
nature.    .    .    ." 

I  have  said  that  Brussels  episode  was  the  turn- 
ing-point of  Charlotte  Bronte's  career.  To  what 
extent  this  was  due  to  the  personal  influence  of  M. 
Heger,  the  first  man  of  any  real  cultivation  she 
had  so  far  met — for  Mr.  Bronte's  Cambridge  ca- 
reer left  him  essentially  illiterate,  and  his  curates 
were  worse — it  is  not  easy  to  say.  M.  Heger  kin- 
dled her  intellectual  impulses,  and  that  was  no 
small  thing.    That  he  won  any  very  great  control 


72  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

over  her  moral  nature  there  is  no  reason  to  believe. 
Surely  one  takes  the  nature  of  an  artist  too  pedan- 
tically to  assume  that  her  heroes  in  Villette  and 
The  Professor  are  primarily  biographical. 

It  is  sufficient  that  M.  Heger  knew  good  litera- 
ture from  bad,  that  he  had  a  sense  of  perspective, 
and  that  his  teaching,  his  criticism,  his  loans  of 
books,  all  made  for  a  sound  education.  Charlotte 
Bronte,  despite  her  genius,  could  not,  one  may  be- 
lieve, have  "  arrived  "  had  she  not  met  M.  Heger. 
She  went  to  Brussels  full  of  the  crude  ambitions, 
the  semi-literary  impulses  that  are  so  common  on 
the  fringe  of  the  writing  world.  She  left  Brussels 
a  woman  of  genuine  cultivation,  of  educated  tastes, 
armed  with  just  the  equipment  that  was  to  enable 
her  to  write  the  books  of  which  two  generations 
of  her  countrymen  have  been  justly  proud. 


CHAPTER    VIII 

POEMS 

The  Idea  of  starting  a  school  which  had  been 
the  primary  motive  for  the  Brussels  enterprise  nat- 
urally gathered  shape  when  Charlotte  rejoined  her 
sisters  at  Haworth  In  the  beginning  of  1844.  As 
a  first  step  applications  were  made  to  one  or  two 
friends — to  Mrs.  White,  for  example,  In  whose 
family  Charlotte  had  been  a  nursery  governess  be- 
fore she  left  for  Brussels.  But  these  friends  had 
already  arranged  for  their  children's  education 
elsewhere,  and  there  was  nothing  for  It  but  adver- 
tisement. A  circular  was  printed,  offering  board 
and  education  for  £35  per  annum,  with  sundry 
"  extras,"  including  the  French  and  German  that 
It  had  taken  the  girls  so  much  trouble  and  expense 
to  acquire.  All  was  In  vain,  however.  "  Every 
one  wishes  us  well,  but  there  are  no  pupils  to  be 
had,"  Charlotte  writes  to  a  friend.     Yet  a  little 

73 


74  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

later  she  writes  again:  "  We  have  made  no  alter- 
ations yet  in  our  house.  It  would  be  folly  to  do 
so,  while  there  is  so  little  likelihood  of  ever  getting 
pupils." 

So  a  year  rolled  on  and  still  another  in  the  quiet 
Yorkshire  parsonage.  Time  made  it  clear  that  not 
only  were  there  no  pupils  to  be  had  but  that  they 
were  not  even  desirable,  Branwell,  the  once  much 
loved  brother  was  at  home,  hopelessly  wrecking  his 
life  with  dram  drinking  and  drugs,  the  father  fight- 
ing his  son's  malady  as  best  he  could,  sleeping  in 
the  same  room  with  him.  "  The  poor  old  man  and 
I  have  had  a  terrible  night  of  it,"  Branwell  is  re- 
ported to  have  been  heard  to  mutter  one  morning ; 
*'  he  does  his  best,  the  poor  old  man,  but  It  is  all 
over  with  me." 

"  Meanwhile,  life  wears  away,"  Charlotte 
writes  In  March,  1845  J  *'I  shall  soon  be  thirty;  and 
I  have  done  nothing  yet."  But  before  that  year 
had  closed  the  three  sisters  were  busy  in  the  always 
exhilarating  occupation  of  preparing  a  book  for 
the  press.  This  was  a  volume  of  poems.  Char- 
lotte has  herself  recorded  the  circumstances  under 


POEMS  75 

which  she,  Emily  and  Anne  published  this  little 
volume,  through  which  they  hoped  to  climb  the 
ladder  of  fame.  She  has  told  us  that  in  the  au- 
tumn of  1845  she  accidentally  lighted  upon  a  MS. 
volume  of  verse  in  Emily's  handwriting  which  she 
considered  to  be  '*  condensed  and  terse,  vigorous 
and  genuine."  "  It  took  hours,"  her  sister  tells 
us,  *'  to  reconcile  her  to  the  discovery  I  had  made, 
and  days  to  persuade  her  that  such  poems  merited 
publication." 

An  interesting  glimpse  is  here  given  us  by 
Charlotte  of  Emily's  remarkable  aloofness.  So 
shy  was  she  that  "  on  the  recesses  of  her  mind  not 
even  those  nearest  and  dearest  to  her  could,  with 
impunity,  intrude  unlicensed."  Anne,  less  pain- 
fully reticent,  speedily  produced  her  compositions, 
''  intimating  that,  since  Emily's  had  given  me 
pleasure,  I  might  like  to  look  at  hers."  ''  I  could 
not,"  Charlotte  continues,  *'  but  be  a  partial  judge, 
yet  I  thought  that  those  verses,  too,  had  a  sweet, 
serene  pathos  of  their  own." 

The  three  sisters  determined  to  publish.  To  find 
a  publisher  on  any  terms  was,  however,  not  easy. 


76  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

Many  to  whom  they  applied  did  not  even  trouble 
to  answer.  Finally  they  arranged  with  two  young 
booksellers  and  stationers  of  Paternoster  Row — 
Aylott  &  Jones — who  did  but  little  publishing,  but 
who,  a  few  years  later,  were  to  give  their  imprint 
to  the  four  parts  of  The  Germ,  that  Interesting 
adventure  of  the  Pre-Raphaelite  Brethren.  From 
the  correspondence  with  Aylott  &  Jones,  which  has 
been  preserved,  we  learn  that  the  three  sisters  paid 
£36  10^.  for  the  printing  and  binding,  and  yet  an- 
other £10  or  £12  for  advertising  the  book.  Ten 
years  later,  when  Charlotte  had  made  a  reputation 
with  Jane  Eyre,  her  publishers,  Smith,  Elder,  gave 
her  £24  for  the  copyright,  and  they  reissued  the 
book  with  a  new  title  page,  using  up  the  old  sheets. 
Even  then  there  was  no  call  for  a  second  edition. 

The  little  book  of  less  than  200  pages  duly  ap- 
peared. It  was  reviewed  In  the  Athenaeum^  where 
the  critic  discovered  that  Ellis  possessed  "  a  fine 
quaint  spirit ''  and  "  an  evident  power  of  wing, 
that  may  reach  heights  not  here  attempted." 
There  Is  a  letter  from  Charlotte  extant  in  which 
she  thanks  the  editor  of  The  Dublin  University 


POEMS  77 

Magazine  for  "  the  Indulgent  notice  "  that  ap- 
peared In  his  last  Issue.^  As  an  outcome  of  it  all, 
but  two  copies  only  were  sold.  Undismayed  at  the 
world's  coldness,  Charlotte  "  used  up  "  some  of 
the  copies  by  sending  them  to  the  leaders  of  con- 
temporary literature — to  Wordsworth,  Tennyson, 
Lockhart,  and  De  Quincey  among  others. 

There  were  nineteen  poems  by  Currer  Bell  In 
the  little  volume,  twenty-one  by  Ellis,  and  the  same 
number  by  Acton.  Charlotte  has  said  the  last 
word  on  the  collection  when  In  the  preface  to  her 
sister's  Remains  ^  she  said: — 

*' The  book  was  printed;  It  Is  scarcely  known, 
and  all  of  it  that  merits  to  be  known  are  the  poems 
of  Ellis  Bell.  The  fixed  conviction  I  held,  and 
hold,  of  the  worth  of  these  poems  has  not  indeed 
received  the  confirmation  of  much  favourable  crit- 
icism; but  I  must  retain  it  notwithstanding." 

Ellis  Bell,  indeed,  was  the  poet.  Currer  was  to 
give  one  out  of  many  demonstrations  of  the  fact 

^  It  is  given  in  full  in  a  note  to  the  Haworth  Edition  of  Mrs. 
Gaskell's  Life. 

2  In  the  introduction  to  the  1850  edition  of  Wuthering  Heights 
and  Agnes  Grey. 


78  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

that  a  writer  may  be  a  most  forcible  and  effective 
master  of  prose,  and  yet  have  no  capacity  whatever 
for  verse  that  deserves  to  be  called  poetry.  Anne 
Bronte,  however,  or  '*  Acton  Bell,"  wrote  verse 
that  has  at  least  found  its  way  into  some  hymn- 
books.  It  is  a  distinction  that  would  probably 
have  pleased  her  more  than  any  other  kind  of  lit- 
erary fame. 

Ellis  Bell  was,  it  will  ever  be  acknowledged,  the 
one  poet  of  a  family  many  members  of  which  at- 
tempted verse.  The  lines  in  this  little  volume  en- 
titled "  The  Old  Stoic  "  will  certainly  keep  their 
place  in  English  literature  for  all  time: — 

Riches  I  hold  in  light  esteem; 

And  love  I  laugh  to  scorn; 
And  lust  of  fame  was  but  a  dream 

That  vanished  with  the  morn: 

And  if  I  pray,  the  only  prayer 

That  moves  my  lips  for  me 
Is,  "Leave  the  heart  that  now  I  bear, 

And  give  me  liberty!" 

Yes,  as  my  swift  days  near  their  goal, 

*Tis  all  that  I  implore; 
In  life  and  death,  a  chainless  soul, 

With  courage  to  endure. 


POEMS  79 

In  the  '*  Selections  "  from  the  poems  by  Ellis 
and  Acton  Bell  that  Charlotte  Bronte  added  to 
the  1850  edition  of  Wuthering  Heights,  there  is 
contained  a  biographical  fragment  that  is  unap- 
proachable in  its  simple  pathos.  No  biographer 
would  be  well  advised  to  try  to  paraphrase  what  is 
here  said,  or  indeed  to  change  it  by  a  line : — 

"  My  sister  Emily  loved  the  moors.  Flowers 
brighter  than  the  rose  bloomed  in  the  blackest  of 
the  heath  for  her;  out  of  a  sullen  hollow  in  a  livid 
hill-side  her  mind  could  make  an  Eden.  She 
found  in  the  bleak  solitude  many  and  dear  delights ; 
and  not  the  least  and  best-loved  was — liberty. 


"  After  the  age  of  twenty,  having  meantime 
studied  alone  with  diligence  and  perseverance,  she 
went  with  me  to  an  establishment  on  the  Continent : 
the  same  suffering  and  conflict  ensued,  heightened 
by  the  strong  recoil  of  her  upright,  heretic  and 
English  spirit  from  the  gentle  Jesuitry  of  the  for- 
eign and  Romish  system.  Once  more  she  seemed 
sinking,  but  this  time  she  rallied  through  the  mere 


8o  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

force  of  resolution:  with  inward  remorse  and 
shame  she  looked  back  on  her  former  failure,  and 
resolved  to  conquer  in  this  second  ordeal.  She  did 
conquer;  but  the  victory  cost  her  dear.  She  was 
never  happy  till  she  carried  her  hard-won  knowl- 
edge back  to  the  remote  English  village,  the  old 
parsonage-house,  and  desolate  Yorkshire  hills.  A 
very  few  years  more,  and  she  looked  her  last  on 
those  hills,  and  breathed  her  last  in  that  house,  and 
under  the  aisle  of  that  obscure  village  church  she 
found  her  last  lowly  resting-place.  Merciful  was 
the  decree  that  spared  her  when  she  was  a  stranger 
in  a  strange  land,  and  guarded  her  dying  bed  with 
kindred  love  and  congenial  constancy." 

In  those  "  Selections  "  also  Charlotte  Bronte  has 
preserved  for  us  a  poem  of  supreme  worth,  a  poem 
that  will  take  its  place  as  one  of  the  very  best  in  all 
literature  written  by  a  woman.  ''  They  were,"  her 
sister  tells  us,  "  the  last  lines  that  Emily  ever 
wrote  " : — 

No  coward  soul  is  mine, 
No  trembler  in  the  world's  storm-troubled  sphere: 

I  see  Heaven's  glories  shine, 
And  faith  shines  equal,  arming  me  from  fear. 


POEMS  8 I 

O  God  within  my  breast, 
Almighty,  ever-present  Deity! 

Life — that  in  me  has  rest, 
As  I — undying  Life — have  power  in  Thee! 

Vain  are  the  thousand  creeds 
That  move  men's  hearts:  unutterably  vain; 

Worthless  as  withered  weeds, 
Or  idlest  froth  amid  the  boundless  main. 

To  waken  doubt  in  one 
Holding  so  fast  by  Thine  infinity; 

So  surely  anchored  on 
The  steadfast  rock  of  immortality. 

With  wide-embracing  love 
Thy  spirit  animates  eternal  years, 

Pervades  and  broods  above, 
Changes,  sustains,  dissolves,  creates,  and  rears. 

Though  earth  and  man  were  gone. 
And  suns  and  universes  ceased  to  be, 

And  Thou  wert  left  alone. 
Every  existence  would  exist  in  Thee. 

There  is  not  room  for  Death, 
Nor  atom  that  his  might  could  render  void: 

Thou — Thou  art  Being  and  Breath, 
And  what  Thou  art  may  never  be  destroyed. 

Not  less  memorable  perhaps  are  the  stanzas  that 
accompany  the   "  Last  Lines,"   and  will  be  pre- 


82  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

served  with  them  in  all  competent  anthologies  of 
English  poetry: — 

Often  rebuked,  yet  always  back  returning 

To  those  first  feelings  that  were  born  with  me, 

And  leaving  busy  chase  of  wealth  and  learning 
For  idle  dreams  of  things  which  cannot  be: 

To-day,  I  will  seek  not  the  shadowy  region; 

Its  unsustaining  vastness  waxes  drear; 
And  visions  rising,  legion  after  legion. 

Bring  the  unreal  world  too  strangely  near, 

I'll  walk,  but  not  in  old  heroic  traces. 

And  not  in  paths  of  high  morality, 
And  not  among  the  half-distinguished  faces, 

The  clouded  forms  of  long-past  history. 

I'll  walk  where  my  own  nature  would  be  leading: 

It  vexes  me  to  choose  another  guide: 
Where  the  gray  flocks  in  ferny  glens  are  feeding, 

Where  the  wild  wind  blows  on  the  mountain  side. 

What  have  those  lonely  mountains  worth  revealing  ? 

More  glory  and  more  grief  than  I  can  tell : 
The  earth  that  wakes  one  human  heart  to  feeling 

Can  centre  both  the  worlds  of  Heaven  and  Hell. 


CHAPTER    IX 
BRANWELL   BRONTE 

Branwell,  or  Patrick  Branwell  Bronte,  was 
twenty-nine  years  of  age  when  his  three  sisters  is- 
sued their  volume  of  poems,  and  he  died  two  years 
later  without,  as  Charlotte  tells  us,  ever  having 
known  that  his  sisters  had  published  a  line,  al- 
though Jane  Eyre^  Agnes  Grey,  The  Tenant  of 
Wildfell  Hall,  and  Wuthering  Heights  had  all  ap- 
peared before  his  death.  In  after  years,  when  the 
whole  family  had  become  extinct,  a  rumour  grew 
up,  which  found  its  origin  in  Haworth  gossip,  to 
the  effect  that  Branwell  wrote  Wuthering  Heights 
— that  he  had  claimed  to  have  done  so.  Such  a 
rumour  is  discredited  for  any  intelligent  person  by 
Charlotte's  disclaimer  which  was  conveyed  in  a  let- 
ter to  her  friend,  Mr.  W.  S.  Williams,  announcing 
BranwelPs  death: — 

"  My  unhappy  brother  never  knew  what  his  sis- 
83 


84  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

ters  had  done  in  literature — he  was  not  aware  that 
they  had  ever  published  a  line.  We  could  not  tell 
him  of  our  efforts  for  fear  of  causing  him  too  deep 
a  pang  of  remorse  for  his  own  time  misspent  and 
talents  misapplied." 

It  is  discredited  further,  if  that  were  necessary, 
from  the  fact  that  Branwell,  with  an  "  itch  "  for 
writing,  seems  never  to  have  produced  prose  or 
poetry  of  any  distinction.  Charlotte's  letters  are 
always  full  of  character,  Branwell's  always  inef- 
fective, and  his  many  little  books  that  I  have  read 
in  manuscript,  some  of  them  written  long  after  he 
was  twenty  years  of  age,  are  singularly  feeble. 
The  braggadocio  of  the  entirely  worthless  young 
man,  anxious  to  shine  and  constantly  talking  of  his 
literary  talents — of  what  he  was  always  going  to 
achieve,  could  easily  account  for  the  fact  that,  look- 
ing backwards,  some  of  his  old  friends  and  cronies 
would  be  persuaded  that  Branwell  had  actually  as- 
sured them  that  he  wrote  the  book  which  was  only 
published  ten  months  before  his  death — at  a  time 
when  he  was  in  the  lowest  depths  of  alcoholism. 
When  he  died  JVuthering  Heights  had  probably 


BRANWELL    BRONTE  85 

not  sold  a  hundred  copies,  and  its  authorship  was 
certainly  an  entire  secret  to  these  friends  who  did 
not  say  one  word  about  the  son's  claims  until  his 
father  had  died  thirteen  years  later. 

The  growth  of  the  legend  as  to  Branwell's  au- 
thorship is  indeed  amazing.  We  find  for  example 
that  Mr.  January  Searle,  writing  in  The  Mirror,, 
gives  a  most  circumstantial  account  of  conversa- 
tions with  Branwell  concerning  a  story  he  had  writ- 
ten, and  indeed  he  is  made  to  discuss  pretty  freely 
Charlotte's  novel  as  well.  Another  acquaintance, 
Newman  Dearden,  contributed  to  the  Halifax 
Guardian  of  1867  some  facts,  as  he  called  them, 
whence  we  learn  that  Branwell  read  to  this  and 
other  friends,  a  large  part  of  the  story  In  manu- 
script exactly  as  it  reads  in  Wuthering  Heights. 
Yet  another  witness,  Edward  Sloane,  of  Halifax, 
made  similar  statements,  and  Francis  Grundy  is 
even  more  explicit  as  the  following  passage 
indicates : — 

"  Patrick  Bronte  declared  to  me,  and  what  his 
sister  said  bore  out  the  assertion,  that  he  wrote  a 
great  portion  of  Wuthering  Heights  himself.    In- 


86  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

deed,  it  Is  impossible  for  me  to  read  that  story  with- 
out meeting  with  many  passages  which  I  feel  cer- 
tain must  have  come  from  his  pen.  The  weird 
fancies  of  diseased  genius  with  which  he  used  to 
entertain  me  in  our  long  talks  at  Luddendenfoot 
reappear  in  the  pages  of  the  novel,  and  I  am  in- 
clined to  believe  that  the  very  plot  was  his  inven- 
tion rather  than  his  sister's."  ^ 

All  this  "  evidence  "  causes  little  commotion  in 
the  mind  of  any  one  who  has  watched  how  legends 
grow  and  gather  force.  Branwell  could  not  have 
written  a  line  of  Wuthering  Heights,  although  he 
did  doubtless  furnish  phrases  for  the  mouth  of  this 
or  that  example  of  human  wreckage  flitting  so 
tragically  through  Its  pages.  His  last  two  years 
of  life,  the  years  of  his  three  sisters'  greatest  lit- 
erary activity,  were  spent  by  him  In  utter  debase- 
ment entirely  outside  all  Intellectual  Interests.  He 
was  the  author  of  his  sisters'  books  only  so  far  as 
he  was  the  shameful  cause  of  their  intense  isolation 
during  this  period.  "  Branwell  still  remains  at 
home,  and  while  he  Is  here  you  shall  not  come. 
^  Memories  of  the  Pasty  by  Francis  H.  Grundy. 


BRANWELL   BRONTE  87 

I  am  more  confirmed  In  that  resolution  the  more 
I  know  of  him,"  writes  Charlotte  to  her  friend, 
Ellen  Nussey,  in  November  1845,  ^^^  thence  to 
his  death,  in  September  1848,  things  grew  worse 
and  worse. 

Yet  Branwell  had  started  with  high  hopes  and 
higher  dreams  on  the  part  of  his  sisters,  who  began 
by  thinking  him  so  much  more  richly  endowed  than 
themselves.  A  letter  written  by  Charlotte  to  her 
brother  in  1832,  when  Branwell  was  fifteen  years 
of  age  and  she  was  sixteen,  commences  with  the 
intimation  that  *'  as  usual  "  she  addresses  her  week- 
ly letter  to  him,  "  because  to  you  I  find  the  most 
to  say."  This  intimate  affection  seems  to  have  pre- 
vailed until  the  time  when  Branwell  took  his  flight 
from  the  nest.  How  much  he  was  the  spoilt  child 
of  the  Haworth  circle,  the  favourite  in  particular 
of  the  aunt,  who  would  necessarily  think  more  of 
him  than  of  all  her  nieces  put  together,  is  shown 
by  reference  to  Anne  Bronte's  novel.  The  Tenant 
of  Wildfell  HalU  the  book  in  which  we  have  more 
glimpses  than  in  any  other  of  the  Bronte  home 
life;  Mrs.  Markham,  in  that  story,  is  obviously  a 


88  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

picture  of  Miss  Branwell,  and  precisely  as  Gilbert 
Markham's  sisters  thought  of  their  mother's  par- 
tiality would  Branwell's  sisters  think  about  the 
treatment  meted  out  to  their  brother  by  his  affec- 
tionate aunt: — 

"  I  was  too  late  for  tea:  but  my  mother  had 
kindly  kept  the  tea-pot  and  muffin  warm  upon  the 
hob,  and,  though  she  scolded  me  a  little,  readily 
admitted  my  excuses;  and  when  I  complained  of 
the  flavour  of  the  overdrawn  tea,  she  poured  the 
remainder  into  the  slop-basin,  and  bade  Rose  put 
some  fresh  into  the  pot,  and  reboil  the  kettle, 
which  offices  were  performed  with  great  commo- 
tion, and  certain  remarkable  comments. 

"  *  Well ! — if  it  had  been  me  now,  I  should  have 
had  no  tea  at  all — If  it  had  been  Fergus,  even,  he 
would  have  to  put  up  with  such  as  there  was,  and 
been  told  to  be  thankful,  for  it  was  far  too  good 
for  him;  but  you — we  can't  do  too  much  for  you. 
It's  always  so — if  there's  anything  particularly  nice 
at  table,  mamma  winks  and  nods  at  me,  to  abstain 
from  It,  and  if  I  don't  attend  to  that,  she  whispers, 
"  Don't  eat  so  much  of  that.  Rose;  Gilbert  will 


BRANWELL    BRONTE  89 

like  It  for  his  supper  " — Fm  nothing  at  all.  In  the 
parlour,  it's  "  Come,  Rose,  put  away  your  things, 
and  let's  have  the  room  nice  and  tidy  against  they 
come  In :  and  keep  up  a  good  fire ;  Gilbert  likes  a 
cheerful  fire."  In  the  kitchen — '*  Make  that  pie  a 
large  one.  Rose;  I  dare  say  the  boys'll  be  hungry; 
and  don't  put  so  much  pepper  in,  they'll  not  like 
it,  I'm  sure,"  or  "  Rose,  don't  put  so  many  spices 
In  the  pudding;  Gilbert  likes  It  plain," — or, 
"  Mind  you  put  plenty  of  currants  In  the  cake,  Fer- 
gus likes  plenty."  If  I  say,  *'  Well,  mamma,  I 
don't,"  I'm  told  I  ought  not  to  think  of  myself — 
"  you  know,  Rose,  in  all  household  matters,  we 
have  only  two  things  to  consider,  first,  what's 
proper  to  be  done,  and,  secondly,  what's  most 
agreeable  to  the  gentlemen  of  the  house — anything 
will  do  for  the  ladles."  ' 

"  *  And  very  good  doctrine  too,'  said  my  mother, 
*  Gilbert  thinks  so  I'm  sure.'  " 

Branwell's  life  story  In  Its  concluding  chapters 
Is  not  exhilarating.  He  was  Intended  for  a 
painter,  and  there  were  dreams  In  the  Haworth 
parsonage  of  great  fame  to  be  acquired  after  study 


90  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

at  the  Royal  Academy  Schools.  He  had  already 
shown  some  moderate  talent  in  this  direction  under 
the  tuition  of  WilHam  Robinson,  a  portrait  painter 
of  Leeds,  at  a  time  when  it  will  be  remembered 
every  town  had  its  portrait  painter  and  no  photog- 
rapher, when  every  sitting-room  was  decorated 
or  disfigured  by  huge  canvases,  representing  the 
heads  of  the  family.  Branwell  had  certainly  as 
much  talent  for  portrait  painting  as  many  of  these 
"  artists,"  and  so  to  London  he  went  with  high 
hopes.  But  London,  it  is  clear,  taught  him  nothing 
that  was  of  value  to  him;  perhaps  it  gave  the  first 
impulse  in  his  demoralization.  In  any  case  life  in 
London  was  too  costly  for  the  son  of  a  poorly  paid 
village  priest,  and  the  boy  returned  home.  This 
was  in  1835.  ^^^  the  next  three  years  he  would 
have  seemed  to  have  done  Httle  but  loaf  about  the 
village,  nominally  a  portrait  painter,  actually  the 
secretary  of  the  Masonic  Lodge  at  Haworth — 
"  The  Lodge  of  the  Three  Graces,"  and  the  boon 
companion  of  every  one  who  enjoyed  conviviality, 
a  most  unfortunate  life  for  a  young  man  of  twenty. 
He  did,  however,  continue  his  art  studies  under 


BRANWELL    BRONTE  91 

Robinson  at  Leeds,  and  painted  many  portraits 
there  and  at  Bradford.  There  Is  a  very  human 
picture  of  him  In  one  of  Charlotte's  letters  to  a 
friend,  dated  1838,  when  Branwell  was  twenty- 
one.  Her  friends,  Mary  and  Martha  Taylor, 
were  visiting  her : — 

"  They  are  making  such  a  noise  about  me,  I 
cannot  write  any  more.  Mary  Is  playing  on  the 
piano;  Martha  Is  chattering  as  fast  as  her  little 
tongue  can  run;  and  Branwell  Is  standing  before 
her,  laughing  at  her  vivacity." 

The  beginning  of  January  1840  saw  Branwell  at 
Broughton-In-Furness,  as  tutor  in  the  family  of  a 
Mr.  Postlethwaite,  concerning  which  experience  of 
his  all  we  know  Is  from  a  letter  which  says : — 

''  I  am  fixed  in  a  little  retired  town  by  the  sea- 
shore, among  the  wild  woody  hills  that  rise  around 
me — huge,  rocky,  and  capped  with  clouds.  My 
employer  Is  a  retired  county  magistrate,  a  large 
landowner,  and  of  a  right  hearty  and  generous  dis- 
position. His  wife  Is  a  quiet,  silent  and  amiable 
woman,  and  his  sons  are  two  fine  spirited  lads."  ^ 

^  Leyland's  Bronte  Family, 


92  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

Branwell  did  not  lodge  with  the  family,  but  with 
a  surgeon  in  the  town.  His  tutorship  was  probably 
a  dire  failure,  although  Mr.  Leyland  declares  that 
it  ended  at  Mr.  Bronte's  instigation  In  June,  that  is, 
after  five  months.  It  is  scarcely  probable  that  Mr. 
Bronte  could  have  desired  that  his  son  should  once 
more  enter  upon  the  loafing  life  at  Haworth,  nor 
can  Branwell's  next  effort  to  earn  a  living  be  con- 
sidered a  rise  in  social  position.  In  October  1840, 
he  obtained  a  situation  as  clerk-in-charge  at  Sower- 
by  Bridge  Station,  on  the  Leeds  and  Manchester 
Railway.  Hence  he  was  transferred  after  a  few 
months  to  Luddendenfoot,  on  the  same  line. 
Here  we  have  pictures  of  him  from  two  quarters — 
Mr.  Francis  Grundy  and  Mr.  William  Heaton. 
The  former  was  a  railway  engineer  stationed  In  the 
district,  who  thus  describes  Branwell  at  this 
time : — 

"  Insignificantly  small;  a  mass  of  red  hair,  which 
he  wore  brushed  high  off  his  forehead — to  help  his 
height,  I  fancy;  a  great,  lumpy,  intellectual  fore- 
head, nearly  half  the  size  of  the  whole  facial  con- 
tour; small  ferrety  eyes,  deep-sunk,  and  still  further 


BRANWELL    BRONTE  93 

hidden  by  the  never  removed  spectacles;  prominent 
nose,  but  weak  lower  features.  Small  and  thin  of 
person,  he  was  the  reverse  of  attractive  at  first 
sight."  ^ 

Mr.  Heaton  apparently  had  a  great  admiration 
for  the  railway  clerk,  unless,  as  we  suspect,  this 
came  like  so  many  of  the  reminiscences  of  Bran- 
well,  as  a  sentiment  born  of  after  knowledge  of  the 
genius  of  the  family,  when  to  have  known  any  one 
of  the  dead  and  gone  Brontes  was  to  reap  a  kind 
of  reflected  glory  throughout  Yorkshire,  and  In- 
deed everywhere.  That  Branwell  should  have 
been  able  to  quote  scraps  of  popular  poetry  was, 
we  see,  a  sign  of  power  to  this  admirer: — 

"  His  talents  were  of  a  very  exalted  kind.  I 
have  heard  him  quote  pieces  from  the  Bard  of 
Avon,  from  Shelley,  Wordsworth  and  Byron,  as 
well  as  from  Butler's  Hudihras,  in  such  a  manner 
as  often  made  me  wish  I  had  been  a  scholar,  as 
he  was."  ^ 

If  he  were  a  *'  scholar,"  Branwell,  unhappily, 

^  Pictures  of  the  Pasty  by  Francis  H.  Grundy,  1879. 
2  The  Bronte  Family ^  by  Francis  A.  Leyland,  1886. 


94  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

lacked  the  practicality  that  would  have  made  a 
competent  railway  booking-clerk,  and  after  twelve 
months  at  Luddendenfoot  he  was  dismissed  by 
the  Company,  It  having  been  found  that  the  ac- 
counts at  this  station  were  in  utter  confusion.  Pre- 
liminary to  leaving  he  had  to  appear  before  some 
of  the  directors,  when  his  most  intimate  friend, 
William  Weightman — Mr.  Bronte's  curate  at  Ha- 
worth  at  the  time — accompanied  him. 

It  was  at  this  period,  early  in  1842,  that  a  defi- 
nite deterioration  took  place  in  Branwell.  His  sis- 
ters Charlotte  and  Emily  were  in  Brussels,  Anne 
was  in  a  situation  as  governess,  the  aunt  was  dying. 
Branwell  was  spending  all  his  time  In  the  village 
Inn.  One  last  effort  he  made  to  earn  a  livelihood. 
He  was  engaged  as  tutor  in  the  family  where  Anne 
was  a  governess — her  second  position  of  the  kind. 
This  was  with  Mr.  Edmund  Robinson,  a  wealthy 
clergyman  not  holding  any  living,  but  residing  at 
Thorpe  Green,  Little  Ouseburn,  in  Yorkshire. 
Here  began — In  1842 — the  sordid  "romance," 
concerning  which  too  much  has  been  written. 
Branwell    became   enamoured   of   his    employer's 


BRANWELL    BRONTE  95 

wife  and  persuaded  himself  and  all  his  friends  that 
he  had  received  encouragement.  That  Mrs.  Rob- 
inson, many  years  younger  than  her  husband,  did 
feel  a  certain  kindliness  for  the  eccentric  youth  Is 
undoubted.  Anne  Bronte,  who  was  on  the  spot, 
clearly  felt  that  she  was  considerably  to  blame. 
But  that  she  was  entirely  guiltless  of  any  serious 
wrong  may  now  be  accepted  as  Indisputable.  The 
legend  that  grew  up  In  the  Haworth  home  had  no 
basis  but  In  the  perfervid  imagination  of  the  now 
thoroughly  debased  Branwell,  who  talked  contin- 
uously of  his  wrongs  after  Mr.  Robinson  had 
turned  him  out  of  the  house,  who  declared  that  the 
woman  loved  him  and  would  marry  him  when  her 
fast-falling  husband  died.  Mr.  Robinson  died, 
and  Branwell  spread  the  further  legend  that  the 
widow  would  marry  him  had  her  husband  not 
made  a  will  which  would  render  her  penniless  did 
she  do  so.  The  will  of  Mr.  Robinson,  who  died 
In  May  1846,  demonstrates  that  he  put  no  restraint 
whatever  upon  the  future  action  of  his  wife.  Bran- 
well succeeded  in  disgusting  his  sisters,  and  en- 
tirely alienating  them,  but  at  the  same  time  they 


96  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

accepted  too  easily  his  own  account  of  the  affair. 
Mrs.  Gaskell  and  Miss  Nussey,  for  example,  were 
both  persuaded  that  Branwell  Bronte's  disastrous 
end  was  due  to  a  wicked  intrigue.  So  entirely  had 
Mrs.  Gaskell  caught  Charlotte  Bronte's  own  view 
of  her  brother's  end  that  she  told  Miss  Nussey  of 
her  Intention  to  avenge  him  upon  the  "  wicked 
woman."  Throwing  all  discretion  to  the  winds, 
she  ventured,  in  the  first  edition  of  her  Life  of 
Charlotte  Bronte^  upon  an  attack  on  Mrs.  Robin- 
son that  is  surprising  In  Its  vehemence  and  its  libel- 
ousness.  That  she  escaped  with  an  apology  and 
the  withdrawal  of  the  offending  passages  in  later 
editions  of  the  Life  must  be  counted  for  greater 
good  fortune  than  she  recognised. 

Meanwhile  let  us  turn  to  Branwell  as  we  see 
him  in  his  last  days  in  his  sister's  correspondence. 
Writing  to  Ellen  Nussey,  in  April  1846,  Char- 
lotte says : — 

"  Branwell  stays  at  home,  and  degenerates  In- 
stead of  Improving.  It  has  been  lately  intimated 
to  him  that  he  would  be  received  again  on  the  rail- 
road where  he  was  formerly  stationed  if  he  would 


Born  1817 


Died  1848 


Patrick  Branwell  Bronte 

From  a  Silhouette  in  the  possession  of  the  Rev.  A.  B.  Nicholls 


BRANWELL    BRONTE  97 

behave  more  steadily,  but  he  refuses  to  make  an 
effort;  he  will  not  work;  and  at  home  he  is  a  drain 
on  every  resource — an  impediment  to  all  hap- 
piness." 

A  year  later  things  are  no  better,  there  Is  the 
same  story  of  wreckage  and  powerlessness  of  will. 
In  May  1847  she  writes: — 

"  Branwell  is  quieter  now,  and  for  a  reason :  he 
has  got  to  the  end  of  a  considerable  sum  of  money, 
and  consequently  is  obliged  to  restrict  himself  in 
some  degree." 

In  yet  another  year  it  Is  the  same,  for  in  July 
1848  we  have  the  following: — 

"  Branwell  is  the  same  in  conduct  as  ever.  His 
constitution  seems  much  shattered.  Papa,  and 
sometimes  all  of  us,  have  sad  nights  with  him:  he 
sleeps  most  of  the  day,  and  consequently  will  lie 
awake  at  night." 

Then,  In  September  1848  came  the  end,  as  one 
of  Charlotte's  letters  describes  It: — 

*'  *  We  have  hurried  our  dead  out  of  our  sight.' 
A  lull  begins  to  succeed  the  gloomy  tumult  of  last 
week.     It  is  not  permitted  us  to  grieve  for  him 


98  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

who  Is  gone  as  others  grieve  for  those  they  lose. 
The  removal  of  our  only  brother  must  necessarily 
be  regarded  by  us  rather  In  the  light  of  a  mercy 
than  a  chastisement.  Branwell  was  his  father's  and 
his  sisters'  pride  and  hope  In  boyhood,  but  since 
manhood  the  case  has  been  otherwise.  It  has  been 
our  lot  to  see  him  take  a  wrong  bent ;  to  hope,  ex- 
pect, wait  his  return  to  the  right  path ;  to  know  the 
sickness  of  hope  deferred,  the  dismay  of  prayer 
baffled ;  to  experience  despair  at  last — and  now  to 
behold  the  sudden  early  obscure  close  of  what 
might  have  been  a  noble  career. 

"  I  do  not  weep  from  a  sense  of  bereavement — 
there  Is  no  prop  withdrawn,  no  consolation  torn 
away,  no  dear  companion  lost — but  for  the  wreck 
of  talent,  the  ruin  of  promise,  the  untimely  dreary 
extinction  of  what  might  have  been  a  burning  and 
a  shining  light.  My  brother  was  a  year  my  junior. 
I  had  aspirations  and  ambitions  for  him  once,  long 
ago — they  have  perished  mournfully.  Nothing 
remains  of  him  but  a  memory  of  errors  and  suffer- 
ings. There  is  such  a  bitterness  of  pity  for  his  life 
and  death,  such  a  yearning  for  the  emptiness  of  his 


BRANWELL    BRONTE  99 

whole  existence  as  I  cannot  describe.     I  trust  time 
win  allay  these  feelings. 

**  My  poor  father  naturally  thought  more  of  his 
only  son  than  of  his  daughters,  and,  much  and  long 
as  he  had  suffered  on  his  account,  he  cried  out  for 
his  loss  like  David  for  that  of  Absalom — my  son  I 
my  son ! — and  refused  at  first  to  be  comforted. 


"  When  I  looked  upon  the  noble  face  and  fore- 
head of  my  dead  brother  (nature  had  favoured 
him  with  a  fairer  outside  as  well  as  a  finer  consti- 
tution than  his  sisters)  and  asked  myself  what  had 
made  him  go  ever  wrong,  tend  ever  downwards, 
when  he  had  so  many  gifts  to  Induce  to,  and  aid  in, 
an  upward  course,  I  seemed  to  receive  an  oppres- 
sive revelation  of  the  feebleness  of  humanity — of 
the  inadequacy  of  even  genius  to  lead  to  true  great- 
ness if  unaided  by  religion  .and  principle.  In  the 
value,  or  even  the  reality,  of  these  two  things  he 
would  never  believe  till  within  a  few  days  of  his 
end;  and  then  all  at  once  he  seemed  to  open  his 
heart  to  a  conviction  of  their  existence  and  worth. 


loo  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

The  remembrance  of  this  strange  change  now  com- 
forts my  poor  father  greatly.  I  myself,  with  pain- 
ful, mournful  joy,  heard  him  praying  softly  in  his 
dying  moments;  and  to  the  last  prayer  which  my 
father  offered  up  at  his  bedside  he  added,  '  Amen/ 
How  unusual  that  word  appeared  from  his  lips,  of 
course  you,  who  did  not  know  him,  cannot  con- 
ceive. Akin  to  this  alteration  was  that  in  his  feel- 
ings towards  his  relations — all  the  bitterness 
seemed  gone. 

''  When  the  struggle  was  over,  and  a  marble 
calm  began  to  succeed  the  last  dread  agony,  I  felt, 
as  I  had  never  felt  before,  that  there  was  peace  and 
forgiveness  for  him  in  Heaven.  All  his  errors — 
to  speak  plainly,  all  his  vices — seemed  nothing  to 
me  in  that  moment:  every  wrong  he  had  done, 
every  pain  he  had  caused,  vanished;  his  sufferings 
only  were  remembered;  the  wrench  to  the  natural 
affections  only  was  left.  If  man  can  thus  expe- 
rience total  oblivion  of  his  fellow's  imperfections, 
how  much  more  can  the  Eternal  Being,  who  made 
man,  forgive  His  creature? 

"  Had  his  sins  been  scarlet  in  their  dye,  I  believe 


BRANWELL    BROiNTE"  '  ' ''Uor 

now  they  are  white  as  wool.  He  is  at  rest,  and 
that  comforts  us  all.  Long  before  he  quitted  this 
world,  life  had  no  happiness  for  him."  ^ 

A  very  substantial  literature  has  been  devoted 
to  Branwell  Bronte,  a  circumstance  that  can  only 
be  accounted  for  from  the  fact  that  he  had  so  con- 
siderable an  influence  upon  the  life  and  work  of 
his  sisters.  On  that  account  alone  we  cannot  say 
with  Mr.  Augustine  Birrell,  that  we  have  "  no  use 
for  this  young  man."  Quite  a  collection  of  docu- 
ments concerning  him  are  to  be  found  in  a  book 
by  Mr.  Francis  Leyland,  called  The  Bronte  Fam- 
ily. Mr.  Leyland's  two  volumes  were  principally 
taken  up  with  extracts  from  Branwell's  writings, 
and  he  appeared  to  see  in  these  indications  of  a 
genius  which  is  certainly  not  there.  Branwell  must 
have  had  an  interesting  personality  before  his  final 
deterioration,  at  least  compared  with  the  type  of 
people  among  whom  he  was  thrown;  but  he  was 
not  endowed  with  gifts  of  a  very  high  order.  Had 
it  not  been  for  the  literary  successes  of  his  sisters 

1  Extracts  from  two  letters  to  W.  S.  Williams,  in  Charlotte 
Bronte  and  Her  Circle. 


id2  GHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

his  name  would  long  since  have  been  forgotten. 
We  do  not  owe  to  him  a  single  memorable  line. 
For  the  three  or  four  years  before  his  death  he  suc- 
ceeded in  making  every  one  in  his  home  profound- 
ly miserable.  Whether  that  was  a  gain  to  art  or 
not  cannot  easily  be  decided;  but  even  taking  into 
consideration  the  indirect  service  to  his  sisters  by 
the  unconscious  suggestion  of  "  copy,"  one  may 
yet  say  with  unqualified  emphasis  that  it  would 
have  been  better  for  poor  Branwell  Bronte  and 
for  every  one  connected  with  him  if  he  had  never 
been  born. 


CHAPTER    X 
THE    PUBLICATIONS    OF   MR.   NEWBY 

It  was  in  April  1846  that  Charlotte  Bronte 
wrote  the  first  letter  that  gave  indications  that  the 
little  village  of  Haworth  had  in  its  midst  three 
young  women  whose  hearts  were  palpitating  with 
ambition  to  shine  in  prose  composition  as  well  as 
in  poetry.  This  letter  was  addressed  to  Aylott 
&  Jones,  the  booksellers,  who  had  engaged  to  is- 
sue for  Charlotte  and  her  sisters  a  little  volume  of 
poems.  It  was  thus  she  wrote,  signing  her  own 
name : — 

"  C,  E.,  and  A.  Bell  are  now  preparing  for  the 
press  a  work  of  fiction  consisting  of  three  distinct 
and  unconnected  tales,  which  may  be  published 
either  together,  as  a  work  of  three  volumes  of  the 
ordinary  novel  size,  or  separately  as  single  vol- 
umes, as  shall  be  deemed  most  advisable." 

The  authors,  Miss  Bronte  explained,  still  main- 
103 


I04  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

taining  the  pleasant  fiction  that  she  was  acting  for 
three  young  men  in  her  father's  parish,  were  not 
prepared  to  publish  at  their  own  expense.  Would 
Aylott  &  Jones,  she  asked,  consider  the  MSS., 
and  would  they  publish  in  the  event  of  thinking  its 
contents  such  as  to  warrant  the  expectation  of  suc- 
cess? Messrs.  Aylott  &  Jones  courteously  re- 
plied that  they  did  not  wish  to  enter  upon  publish- 
ing ventures  of  this  kind,  but  they  gave  advice  as 
to  the  methods  of  approaching  the  various  London 
houses  which  issued  fiction,  and  for  this  Charlotte 
Bronte  thanked  them  cordially  in  a  later  letter. 

The  three  novels  that  the  sisters  then  cherished 
the  hope  of  publishing  were  The  Professor  by 
Charlotte,  JVuthering  Heights  by  Emily,  and 
Agnes  Grey  by  Anne.  The  precise  manner  in 
which  The  Professor  became  detached  from  the 
books  by  Emily  and  Anne  has  never  been  made 
clear.  All  three  sisters  sent  their  books  travelling 
from  publisher  to  publisher,  and  Charlotte,  in  the 
hour  of  her  success,  more  than  once  referred  to  the 
unfortunate  journey  of  The  Professor,  which,  it 
may  be  added,  reached  Smith  and  Elder  in  a  wrap- 


PUBLICATIONS    OF    MR.    NEWBY    105 

per  that  bore  other  tell-tale  addresses.  To  Mr. 
George  Henry  Lewes  she  wrote  years  later : — 

"  My  work  (a  tale  In  one  volume)  being  com- 
pleted, I  offered  It  to  a  publisher.  He  said  It  was 
original,  faithful  to  nature,  but  he  did  not  feel  war- 
ranted In  accepting  It;  such  a  work  would  not  sell. 
I  tried  six  publishers  In  succession ;  they  all  told  me 
it  was  deficient  in  '  startling  interest '  and  *  thrill- 
ing excitement,'  that  it  would  never  suit  the  circu- 
lating libraries,  and  as  It  was  on  those  libraries  the 
success  of  fiction  mainly  depended,  they  could  not 
undertake  to  publish  what  would  be  overlooked 
there."  ' 

Mrs.  Gaskell  records  that  some  of  the  refusals 
were  not  over-courteously  worded.  Then  came 
the  oft-recorded  triumph  when  the  firm  of  Smith 
and  Elder,  In  rejecting  The  Professor,  declared 
that  a  work  in  three  volumes  would  meet  with  care- 
ful attention — and  Jane  Eyre  was  accepted.  At  a 
much  later  date  Charlotte  tried,  more  than  once, 
to  persuade  her  publishers  to  print  The  Professor, 
and  being  refused,  wrote  half-angrlly,  half-re- 
1  Mrs.  Gaskell,  Haworth  Edition,  May  20,  1847. 


io6  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

proachfully,  to  her  friend  Mr.  George  Smith,  de- 
claring that  the  book  had  now  been  refused  nine 
times  by  *'  The  Trade,"  three  of  the  refusals  hav- 
ing come  from  the  house  that  had  been  so  willing 
to  publish  her  later  books.  "  My  feelings,"  she 
continued,  "  can  only  be  paralleled  by  those  of  a 
doting  parent  towards  an  idiot  child,"  Mr.  Will- 
iams sharing  with  her,  she  declared,  the  distinction 
of  being  the  only  person  who  saw  merit  in  it.^ 

But  all  this  is  to  anticipate — yet  it  was  a  curious 
irony  of  fate  that  left  the  work  of  the  one  of  the 
three  sisters  who  was  to  obtain  any  substantial  pop- 
ularity thus  stranded,  while  the  work  of  Emily  and 
Anne  found  itself  at  least  printed,  although  not 
published.  It  is  clear  that  Wuthering  Heights  and 
Agnes  Grey  also  "  travelled,"  but  it  is  probable 
that  The  Professor  was  being  retained  for  consid- 
eration at  some  other  publisher's  when  the  other 
stories  fell  into  the  hands  of  Mr.  Newby.  Miss 
Bronte  afterwards  said  that  they  were  accepted 
"  on  terms  somewhat  impoverishing  to  the  two 
authors."  In  any  case  Charlotte  speedily  caught 
1  Mrs.  Gaskell,  Haworth  Edition,  page  516. 


PUBLICATIONS    OF    MR.    NEWBY    107 

up  in  the  race.  Thus  she  writes  to  Mr.  W.  S.  Will- 
iams on  November  10,  1847: — 

*'  A  prose  work,  by  Ellis  and  Acton,  will  soon 
appear ;  it  should  have  been  out,  indeed,  long  since, 
for  the  first  proof  sheets  were  already  in  the  press 
at  the  commencement  of  last  August,  before  Cur- 
rer  Bell  had  placed  the  MS.  of  Jane  Eyre  in  your 
hands.  Mr.  Newby,  however,  does  not  do  busi- 
ness like  Messrs.  Smith  and  Elder ;  a  different  spirit 
seems  to  preside  at  Mortimer  Street  to  that  which 
guides  the  helm  at  6^^  Cornhill.  .  .  .  My  re- 
lations have  suffered  from  exhausting  delay  and 
procrastination,  while  I  have  to  acknowledge  the 
benefits  of  a  management  at  once  business-like  and 
gentleman-like,  energetic  and  considerate.  I  should 
like  to  know  if  Mr.  Newby  often  acts  as  he  has 
done  to  my  relations,  or  whether  this  is  an  excep- 
tional instance  of  his  method.  Do  you  know,  and 
can  you  tell  me  anything  about  him?  " 

Mr.  Newby,  who  thus  accepted  Wuthering 
Heights  and  Agnes  Grey^  the  only  novel  by  Emily 
Bronte,  and  the  first  novel  by  Anne,  appears  to 
have  belonged  to  the  order  of  publishers  described 


io8  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

by  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  when  he  said  of  the  late 
Mr.  Kegan  Paul,  "  Kegan  is  a  good  fellow,  but 
Paul  is  a  d — d  scoundrel."  There  would  however 
appear  to  have  been  little  of  the  "  good  fellow  " 
about  Newby,  for  although  professing  to  be 
shocked  at  JVuthering  Heights,  he  published  it  for 
a  consideration,  and  when  Jane  Eyre  had  taken  the 
world  by  storm,  he  gave  out  that  his  books  by  the 
Bells  were  by  the  same  author,  and  promptly  ac- 
cepted another  novel  by  Anne — The  Tenant  of 
Wildfell  Hall — on  the  fly-leaf  of  which  he  insert- 
ed an  advertisement  of  Wuthering  Heights  and 
Agnes  Grey,  containing  "  Opinions  of  the  Press." 
The  Spectator  declares  that  "  the  work  bears  affin- 
ity to  Jane  Eyre!^  John  Bull,  that  it  is  "  written 
with  considerable  ability."  Douglas  Jerrold's 
Journal  that  "  the  work  is  strangely  original.  It 
reminds  us  of  Jane  Eyre,  The  author  is  a  Salvator 
Rosa  with  his  pen.  We  strongly  recommend  all 
our  readers  who  love  novelty  to  get  this  story,  for 
we  can  promise  them  they  never  read  anything  like 
it  before.  It  is  like  Jane  Eyre.''  "  It  is  a  colos- 
sal performance,"  said  the  Atlas. 


PUBLICATIONS    OF    MR.    NEWBY    109 

In  this  connection  It  Is  well  worth  while  repeat- 
ing the  review  In  the  Athenaeum  for  December  25, 
1847.  There  Is  surely  something  very  fascinating 
about  old  reviews  of  books  that  afterwards  become 
classics : — 

^^  Wuthering  Heights^  by  Ellis  Bell;  Agnes 
Grey,  by  Acton  Bell;  3  vols. 

"  Jane  Eyre,  It  will  be  recollected,  was  edited 
by  Mr.  Currer  Bell.  Here  are  two  tales  so  nearly 
related  to  Jane  Eyre  In  cast  of  thought,  Incident 
and  language  as  to  excite  some  curiosity.  All  three 
might  be  the  work  of  one  hand,  but  the  first  issued 
remains  the  best.  In  spite  of  much  power  and  clev- 
erness, In  spite  of  Its  truth  to  life  in  the  remote 
nooks  and  corners  of  England,  Wuthering  Heights 
Is  a  disagreeable  story.  The  Bells  seem  to  affect 
painful  and  exceptional  subjects:  the  misdeeds  and 
oppressions  of  tyranny,  the  eccentricities  of  '  wom- 
an's fantasy.'  They  do  not  turn  away  from  dwell- 
ing upon  those  physical  acts  of  cruelty  which  we 
know  to  have  their  warrant  in  the  real  annals  of 
crime  and  suffering,  but  the  contemplation  of  which 
true  taste  rejects.    The  brutal  master  of  the  lonely 


no  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

house  on  JVuthertng  Heights — a  prison  which 
might  be  pictured  from  life — has  doubtless  had  his 
prototype  in  those  ungenial  and  remote  districts 
where  human  beings,  like  the  trees,  grow  gnarled 
and  dwarfed  and  distorted  by  the  inclement  cli- 
mate; but  he  might  have  been  indicated  with  far 
fewer  touches,  in  place  of  so  entirely  filling  the  can- 
vas that  there  is  hardly  a  scene  untainted  by  his 
presence.  It  was  a  like  dreariness,  a  like  unfortu- 
nate selection  of  objects,  which  cut  short  the  popu- 
larity of  Charlotte  Smith's  novels,  rich  though  they 
be  in  true  pathos  and  faithful  descriptions  of  na- 
ture. Enough  of  what  is  mean  and  bitterly  pain- 
ful and  degrading  gathers  round  every  one  of  us 
during  the  course  of  his  pilgrimage  through  this 
vale  of  tears  to  absolve  the  artist  from  choosing 
his  incidents  and  characters  out  of  such  a  dismal 
catalogue;  and  if  the  Bells,  singly  or  collectively, 
are  contemplating  future  or  frequent  utterances  in 
fiction,  let  us  hope  that  they  will  spare  us  further 
interiors  so  gloomy  as  the  one  here  elaborated  with 
such  dismal  minuteness.  In  this  respect  Agnes 
Grey  is  more  acceptable  to  us,  though  less  power- 


PUBLICATIONS    OF    MR.    NEWBY    iii 

ful.  It  Is  the  tale  of  a  governess  who  undergoes 
much  that  is  In  the  real  bond  of  a  governess's  en- 
durance ;  but  the  new  victim's  trials  are  of  a  more 
Ignoble  quality  than  those  which  awaited  Jane 
Eyre.  In  the  house  of  the  Bloomfields  the  govern- 
ess is  subjected  to  torment  by  terrible  children  (as 
the  French  have  It)  ;  in  that  of  the  Murrays  she  has 
to  witness  the  ruin  wrought  by  false  indulgence  on 
two  coquettish  girls,  whose  coquetries  jeopardise 
her  own  heart's  secret.  In  both  these  tales  there  Is 
so  much  feeling  for  character,  and  nice  marking 
of  scenery,  that  we  cannot  leave  them  without  once 
again  warning  their  authors  against  what  is  eccen- 
tric and  unpleasant.  Never  was  there  a  period  in 
our  history  of  Society  when  we  English  could  so 
ill  afford  to  dispense  with  sunshine." 

But  to  return  to  Mr.  Newby,  who  published,  as 
we  have  seen,  from  Mortimer  Street,  Cavendish 
Square,  and  later  (from  1850  to  1874)  in  Wel- 
beck  Street.  He  seems  to  have  cared  only  for  mak- 
ing money  out  of  his  authors — nothing  at  all  for 
the  literary  honours  of  the  business.  One  of  his 
own  brothers  said  to  Mrs.  Riddell,  the  novelist — 


112  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

"  Were  I  you  I  would  not  say  that  Newby  had 
published  anything  for  me." 

Altogether  Newby  published  nine  volumes  for 
the  Brontes,  and  these  original  nine  volumes  are 
before  me  as  I  write.  Three  volumes  containing 
The  Tenant  of  Wildfell  Hall,  by  Anne  Bronte, 
and  three  further  volumes  form  a  second  edition 
of  that  book.  To  this  Anne  wrote  a  Preface.  Far 
more  valuable  are  the  three  volumes  containing 
Wuthering  Heights  and  Agnes  Grey,  A  catalogue 
at  the  end  of  these  volumes  indicates  that  Mr. 
Newby  had  at  any  rate  many  good  authors  on  his 
lists.  There  we  find  a  book  by  George  Grote — 
Letters  on  the  Recent  Politics  of  Switzerland — a 
book  by  Leopold  von  Ranke,  A  History  of  the  Ro- 
man Monarchy  and  Captain  Medwin's  Life  of 
Shelley,  But  for  the  most  part  the  books  are  now 
long  forgotten  novels;  association  with  Wuthering 
Heights  would  probably  be  Mr.  Newby's  one  lit- 
erary distinction  to-day  were  It  not  that  one  only 
remembers  that  he  added  additional  bitterness  to 
the  always  essentially  unhappy  life  of  Emily 
Bronte. 


PUBLICATIONS    OF    MR.    NEWBY    113 

In  1848  Charlotte  Bronte  frankly  tells  her 
friends  of  Smith  and  Elder,  who  were  prepared  to 
publish  Ellis  and  Acton  as  well  as  Currer  Bell,  that 
her  sisters  are  pledged  to  Newby  for  their  next 
novels,  that  being  one  of  his  conditions  for  publi- 
cation of  their  first  works.  It  was  however  a  letter 
from  Newby  to  an  American  firm,  stating  that  to 
the  best  of  his  belief  the  three  Bells  were  all  one 
person,  that  made  Charlotte  and  Anne  start  for 
London  to  disclose  their  separate  Identities  to 
Charlotte's  own  publishers. 

The  best  account  of  that  visit  Is  contained  In  a 
letter  that  Charlotte  wrote  to  her  friend  Mary 
Taylor,  then  In  New  Zealand.  It  Is  dated  Septem- 
ber 4,  1848,  and  In  It  she  tells  her  friend  that  her 
sister  Anne  had  published  another  book  called  The 
Tenant  of  Wild  fell  Hall,  for  which  £25  had  been 
paid;  and  she  adds,  "  that  as  Acton  Bell's  publisher 
Is  a  shuffling  scamp  I  expect  no  more."  She  does 
not  say,  as  she  might  have  done,  that  the  book  was 
selling  solely  on  account  of  the  enormous  success 
of  Jane  Eyre,  but  she  does  tell  Miss  Taylor  of 
Newby's    assertion   that   Jane   Eyre,    Wuthering 


114  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

Heights,  Agnes  Grey  and  The  Tenant  of  Wildfell 
Hall  were  all  the  productions  of  one  writer. 
"  This,"  she  adds,  "  is  a  lie,  as  Newby  had  been 
told  repeatedly  that  they  were  the  productions  of 
three  different  authors."  A  letter  from  Smith  and 
Elder  stating  their  troubles  in  the  matter  led  to  the 
experience  which  Is  best  detailed  in  the  following 
passage : — 

"  The  upshot  of  it  was  that  on  the  very  day  I 
received  Smith  and  Elder's  letter  Anne  and  I 
packed  up  a  small  box,  sent  it  down  to  Keighley, 
set  out  ourselves  after  tea,  walked  through  a  snow- 
storm to  the  station,  got  to  Leeds,  and  whirled  up 
by  the  night  train  to  London,  with  the  view  of 
proving  our  separate  identity  to  Smith  and  Elder, 
and  confronting  Newby  with  his  lie. 

"  We  arrived  at  the  Chapter  Coffee-house  (our 
old  place,  Polly ;  we  did  not  well  know  where  else 
to  go)  about  eight  o'clock  In  the  morning.  We 
washed  ourselves,  had  some  breakfast,  sat  for  a 
few  minutes,  and  then  set  off  in  queer  Inward  ex- 
citement to  6^,  Cornhlll.  Neither  Mr.  Smith  nor 
Mr.  Williams  knew  we  were  coming;  they  had 


PUBLICATIONS    OF    MR.    NEWBY    115 

never  seen  us ;  they  did  not  know  whether  we  were 
men  or  women,  but  had  always  written  to  us  as 
men." 

The  recognition  at  6^,  Cornhlll,  was  very  dra- 
matic, and  the  pleasant  gossip  with  Mr.  Smith  and 
with  his  manager  Mr.  Williams,  is  related  in  de- 
tail. Then  came  visitors  in  the  evening  to  that 
modest  inn  in  Ivy  Lane,  Paternoster  Row, — Mr. 
Smith  in  evening  dress,  and  his  sisters,  "  two 
elegant  young  ladies  in  full  dress,"  the  goal  being 
the  opera,  where  Charlotte,  with  a  sick  headache, 
was  intensely  self-conscious  of  what  she  called  her 
"  clownishness,"  while  Anne  "  was  calm  and  gentle 
as  she  always  is." 

The  following  day  Mr.  Williams  took  the  two 
sisters  to  church,  and  in  the  afternoon  Mr.  Smith 
went  with  his  carriage  to  take  them  to  dine  with  his 
mother  at  Bayswater.  "  The  rooms,  the  drawing- 
room  especially,  looked  splendid  to  us."  On  Mon- 
day came  another  round  of  pleasure,  and  on  Tues- 
day the  sisters  returned  to  Haworth.  This  letter 
concludes  with  the  statement,  "We  saw  Mr. 
Newby ;  but  of  him  more  another  time." 


ii6  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

It  IS  a  pity  we  have  not  that  further  letter,  but 
there  are  other  glimpses  of  Mr.  Newby  and  his 
dealings.  We  learn,  for  example,  that  a  further 
£25  was  paid  by  Mr.  Newby  on  The  Tenant  of 
Wildfell  Hall,  but  no  more.  Wuthering  Heights 
and  Agnes  Grey  were  published  on  condition  that 
the  authors  shared  the  risks  with  the  publisher,  and 
they  advanced  £50  accordingly.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  the  other  books  sold  sufficiently  well  to  give 
more  than  that  amount  of  author's  profit — largely 
on  the  strength  of  the  success  of  Jane  Eyre,  and 
the  current  belief  that  they  were  by  the  same  au- 
thor— yet  Newby  would  seem  never  to  have  re- 
turned the  £50,  although  Charlotte  tried  to  extract 
it  from  him.  *'  Do  not  give  yourself  much  trouble 
about  Mr.  Newby,"  Charlotte  writes  later,  "I  have 
not  the  least  expectation  that  you  will  be  able  to 
get  anything  from  him.  He  has  an  evasive,  shuf- 
fling plan  of  meeting,  or  rather  eluding,  such  de- 
mands, against  which  it  is  fatiguing  to  contend  " ; 
and  to  the  same  correspondent,  her  friend  Mr. 
George  Smith,  she  writes  still  later:  "  As  to  Mr. 
Newby,  he  charms  me.    First  there  is  the  fascinat- 


PUBLICATIONS   OF    MR.    NEWBY    117 

ing  coyness  with  which  he  shuns  your  pursuit 
..."  and  she  goes  on  to  animadvert  in  a  simi- 
lar strain  to  the  way  in  which  she  considered  Mr. 
Newby  had  robbed  her  sisters,  pretending  he  had 
spent  all  the  profits  of  Wuthering  Heights  in  ad- 
vertising it.  There  pretty  well  one  may  leave  Mr. 
Newby,  and  pass  on  to  the  books  the  publication 
of  which  gave  him  his  only  distinction. 


CHAPTER   XI 

WUTHERING    HEIGHTS 

Emily  Bronte  has  been  called  the  Sphinx  of 
our  modern  literature.  Among  English  novelists 
she  must  always-  hold  a  position  of  eminence,  al- 
though by  virtue  only  of  one  book — Wuthering 
Heights.  That  book  has  a  place  by  itself.  There 
are  greater  novels  doubtless,  novels  replete  with 
humour  and  insight — qualities  that  it  has  not.  But 
there  is  no  book  that  has  so  entirely  won  the  suf- 
frage of  some  of  the  best  minds  of  each  genera- 
tion since  it  appeared.  This  recognition  began 
with  Sydney  Dobell,  the  author  of  Balder;  it  was 
continued  by  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  whose  oft- 
quoted  lines  will  be  remembered,  written  concern- 
ing one : — 

.  .  .  whose  soul 
Knew  no  fellow  for  might, 
Passion,  vehemence,  grief, 
Daring,  since  Byron  died. 
ii8 


WUTHERING    HEIGHTS  119 

It  culminated  In  the  splendid  eloquence  of  Mr. 
Swinburne,  who  places  it  with  King  Lear,  the 
Duchess  of  Malfi,  and  The  Bride  of  Lammer- 
moor,^  the  well-weighed  utterances  of  Mrs.  Hum- 
phry Ward,  to  whom  Emily  Bronte's  book  is 
*'  pure  mind  and  passion,"  ^  and  of  Maurice  Mae- 
terlinck,^ whose  tribute  is  the  more  interesting  in 
that  Belgium  was  the  only  country  that  Emily 
Bronte  visited. — Sydney  DobelPs  criticism  has  nat- 
urally the  most  Interest  because  It  happens  to  be 
one  of  those  contemporary  verdicts  which  pos- 
terity has  endorsed.  In  the  Palladium  of  Septem- 
ber 1850,  Mr.  Dobell  declared  ''  that  there  were 
passages  In  JVuthering  Heights  of  which  any  nov- 
elist, past  or  present,  might  be  proud." 

"  There  are  few  things  in  modern  prose  to  sur- 
pass these  pages  for  native  power,"  Mr.  Dobell 
says  of  the  first  part  of  Wuthering  Heights.  The 
critic  who  treats  of  contemporaries  almost  always 
hesitates  and  halts  in  the  dispensing  of  praise  un- 

^  The  Athenaeum,  June  l6,  1883. 

2  The  Haworth  Edition  of  Wuthering  Heights.    Introduction 
by  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward. 

3  Wisdom  and  Destiny,  by  Maurice  Maeterlinck. 


I20  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

less  supported  by  popular  applause.  There  was  lit- 
tle enough  of  popular  applause  to  greet  Wuthering 
Heights  at  its  first  advent,  and  Mr.  Dobell  proved 
himself  a  good  judge  of  literature  in  saying  as 
much  as  he  did.  He  scarcely  accepted,  it  is  true, 
Currer  Bell's  repudiation  of  identity  with  Ellis. 
But  he  clearly  felt  that  Ellis's  work  was  a  thing 
apart.  He  hinted,  indeed,  that  Wuthering 
Heights  was  an  earlier  work  by  the  author  of  Jane 
Eyre,  but  he  evidently  had  grave  doubts  concerning 
his  own  suggestion.  To  decide  on  the  merits  of  a 
book  of  prose  is,  he  urged,  very  much  a  matter  of 
time.  Does  it  remain  in  our  memories?  Do  those 
who  come  after  us  find  it  equally  unforgettable  ? 

Sydney  Dobell  quoted  certain  passages  when  he 
wrote  of  Wuthering  Heights  to  demonstrate  his 
point  that  when  one  had  once  read  some  of  its  de- 
scriptions one  never  forgot  them.  He  selected  for 
example  that  amazing  account  of  Lockwood's  dis- 
turbed night,  the  child's  face  at  the  window : — 

"  Terror  made  me  curse;  and,  finding  it  useless 
to  attempt  shaking  the  creature  off,  I  pulled  its 
wrist  on  to  the  broken  pane,  and  rubbed  it  to  and 


WUTHERING    HEIGHTS  121 

fro  till  the  blood  ran  down  and  soaked  the  bed- 
clothes :  still  it  wailed  *  Let  me  In !  '  and  maintained 
its  tenacious  grip,  almost  maddening  me  with 
fear." 

This  and  the  description  of  Heathcliff's  anguish 
when  Lockwood  tells  him  of  his  nightmare  are  In- 
stanced by  Dobell  as  unforgettable  passages,  and 
time  has  proved  that  his  Instinct  was  sound.  Writ- 
ing later  concerning  this  review  which  concerned 
Itself  with  Jane  Eyre  as  well,  Charlotte  Bronte 
said  to  Miss  Martineau: — 

"  One  passage  In  It  touched  a  deep  chord.  I 
mean  when  allusion  is  made  to  my  sister  Emily's 
novel  Wuthering  Heights;  the  justice  there  ren- 
dered comes  Indeed  late,  the  wreath  awarded  drops 
In  a  grave,  but  no  matter — I  am  grateful." 

Yet,  when  all  Is  said  It  Is  Charlotte  Bronte's  own 
tribute  to  her  sister's  novel  that  is  the  best  of  all : — 

"  Wuthering  Heights  was  hewn  In  a  wild  work- 
shop, with  simple  tools,  out  of  homely  materials. 
The  statuary  found  a  granite  block  on  a  solitary 
moor;  gazing  thereon  he  saw  how  from  the  crag 
might  be  elicited  a  head,  savage,  swart,  sinister;  a 


122  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

form  moulded  with  at  least  one  element  of  grand- 
eur— power.  He  wrought  with  a  rude  chisel,  and 
from  no  model  but  the  vision  of  his  meditations. 
With  time  and  labour  the  crag  took  human  shape ; 
and  there  it  stands  colossal,  dark  and  frowning, 
half-statue,  half-rock;  in  the  former  sense,  terrible 
and  goblin-like;  in  the  latter,  almost  beautiful,  for 
its  colouring  is  of  mellow  grey,  and  moorland  moss 
clothes  it;  and  heath,  with  its  blooming  bells  and 
balmy  fragrance,  grows  faithfully  close  to  the 
giant's  foot." 

^  ^  ^  :i:  ^  ^ 

The  silent  and  perhaps  rather  grim  Emily  took 
no  part  in  the  Sunday  School  and  social  work  at 
Haworth  that  occupied  her  two  sisters ;  she  shrank 
away  with  her  dogs  from  all  human  companionship 
whenever  possible,  roaming  over  those  moors 
which  brought  her  the  only  happiness  and  joy  that 
she  ever  knew.  She  made  no  friends  at  Brussels, 
no  single  "  comrade  ''  at  Miss  Wooler's  school. 
When  she  died — before  her  thirtieth  birthday — 
she  was  as  isolated  from  all  companionship  but  that 
of  her  sister  Anne  as  she  had  been  twenty  years 
before. 


WUTHERING    HEIGHTS  123 

Not  one  scrap  of  self-revelation  did  Emily  leave 
behind,  two  colourless  letters  to  a  friend  of  Char- 
lotte's being  well  nigh  the  only  memorials  in  her 
handwriting  that  have  been  preserved.^  Her  book 
also  reveals  nothing.  Anne's  novels  were  trans- 
parent transcripts  from  her  narrow  life.  Charlotte 
transferred  every  incident  of  her  experience  into 
her  books.  Emily  was  never  more  aloof  than  in 
her  great  novel.  It  is  dramatic,  it  is  vivid  and  pas- 
sionate, but  it  is  never  self-revealing.  Emily 
learned  German  when  in  Brussels,  and  must  have 
read  the  weird  tales  of  Hoffman ;  she  had,  it  may 
be,  heard  her  father  tell  stories  from  Irish  tradition 
as  Dr.  Wright  and  Miss  Mary  Robinson  both  as- 
sert. She  had  nearer  home  not  only  her  own  broth- 
er's miserable  story  with  its  mock  heroics,  but  many 
other  uncanny  traditions  of  a  kind  to  which  York- 
shire is  certainly  as  prone  as  County  Down.  Did 
she  use  any  of  these  things?    No  one  can  say. 

All  speculation  as  to  sources  of  inspiration  is  far 
beside  the  mark  in  appraising  Emily  Bronte's  gen- 

1  These  are  apparently  lost.  The  letters  were  given  by 
Ellen  Nussey  to  the  late  Lord  Houghton,  but  have  never  been 
seen  by  his  son  the  present  Earl  of  Crewe. 


124  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

ius,  Wuthering  Heights  is  a  book  by  Itself,  with 
less  indebtedness  to  earlier  literature  than  most 
great  novels.  In  my  judgment  it  is  the  greatest 
book  ever  written  by  a  woman.  Those  who  have 
read  it  again  and  again  and  have  found  that  It 
gripped  them  more  forcibly  at  each  succeeding 
reading  have  put  it  to  a  test  indeed.  Quotation 
from  the  book  conveys  little  Idea  of  its  sustained 
power,  although  to  quote  such  a  passage  as  the  one 
where  Catherine  Linton  Is  in  the  Incoherencies  of 
her  deathbed  Is  to  recall  sentences  that  stand  out 
boldly  In  the  records  of  English  fiction : — 

*'  '  That's  a  turkey's,'  she  murmured  to  herself, 
*  and  this  is  a  wild  duck's,  and  this  is  a  pigeon's. 
Ah,  they  put  pigeons'  feathers  In  the  pillows — no 
wonder  I  couldn't  die !  Let  me  take  care  to  throw 
It  on  the  floor  when  I  lie  down.  And  here  Is  a 
moorcock's;  and  this — I  should  know  It  among  a 
thousand — It's  a  lapwing's.  Bonny  bird,  wheeling 
over  our  heads  In  the  middle  of  the  moor.  It 
wanted  to  get  to  Its  nest,  for  the  clouds  had  touched 
the  swells,  and  It  felt  rain  coming.  This  feather 
was  picked  up  from  the  heath,  the  bird  was  not 


WUTHERING    HEIGHTS  125 

shot;  we  saw  Its  nest  In  the  winter,  full  of  little 
skeletons.  Heathcllff  set  a  trap  over  It,  and  the 
old  ones  dare  not  come.  I  made  him  promise  he'd 
never  shoot  a  lapwing  after  that,  and  he  didn't. 
Yes,  here  are  more!  Did  he  shoot  my  lapwings, 
Nelly  ?    Are  they  red,  any  of  them  ?    Let  me  look.' 

3|C  «|C  9|C  5)C  3|C  S|C 

"  *  I  see  In  you,  Nelly,'  she  continued  dreamily, 
*  an  aged  woman ;  you  have  grey  hair  and  bent 
shoulders.  This  bed  Is  the  fairy  cave  under  Penis- 
ton  Crag,  and  you  are  gathering  elf-bolts  to  hurt 
our  heifers;  pretending  while  I  am  near  that  they 
are  only  locks  of  wool.  That's  what  you'll  come 
to  fifty  years  hence;  I  know  you  are  not  so  now. 
I'm  not  wandering;  you're  mistaken,  or  else  I 
should  believe  you  really  were  that  withered  hag, 
and  I  should  think  I  was  under  Penlston  Crag;  and 
I'm  conscious  it's  night,  and  there  are  two  candles 
on  the  table  making  the  black  press  shine  like  jet.' 

Hj  *  *  *  *  * 

"  *  One  time,  however,  we  were  near  quarrel- 
ling. He  said  the  pleasantest  manner  of  spending 
a  hot  July  day  was  lying  from  morning  till  evening 


126  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

on  a  bank  of  heath  In  the  middle  of  the  moors, 
with  the  bees  humming  dreamily  about  among  the 
bloom,  and  the  larks  singing  high  up  over  head, 
and  the  blue  sky,  and  bright  sun  shining  steadily 
and  cloudlessly.  That  was  his  most  perfect  idea  of 
heaven's  happiness — mine  was  rocking  in  a  rustling 
green  tree,  with  a  west  wind  blowing,  and  bright, 
white  clouds  flitting  rapidly  above;  and  not  only 
larks,  but  throstles,  and  blackbirds,  and  linnets, 
and  cuckoos  pouring  out  music  on  every  side,  and 
the  moors  seen  at  a  distance,  broken  into  cool 
dusky  dells;  but  close  by  great  swells  of  long  grass 
undulating  in  waves  to  the  breeze ;  and  woods  and 
sounding  water,  and  the  whole  world  awake  and 
wild  with  joy.  He  wanted  all  to  lie  in  an  ecstasy 
of  peace;  I  wanted  all  to  sparkle  and  dance  in  a 
glorious  jubilee.'  " 

These  passages  and  many  like  them  may  be  read 
again  and  again,  but  indeed  I  know  of  no  novel 
that  may  be  read  repeatedly  with  more  satisfaction. 
The  whole  group  of  tragic  figures  pass  before  us, 
and  we  are  moved  as  In  the  presence  of  great  trag- 
edy.    Emily  Bronte  was  quite  a  young  woman 


WUTHERING    HEIGHTS  127 

when  she  wrote  this  book.  One  almost  feels  that 
it  was  necessary  that  she  should  die.  Any  further 
work  from  her  pen  must  almost  have  been  in  the 
nature  of  an  anteclimax.  It  were  better  that 
Wuthering  Heights  should  stand,  as  does  its  au- 
thor, in  splendid  isolation. 

Let  us  picture  for  a  moment,  as  well  as  we  are 
able,  the  author  of  this  remarkable  novel.  We 
meet  her  as  a  child  of  five  at  the  Clergy  Daughters' 
School  at  Casterton,  where  attached  to  her  name 
inscribed  in  the  books  we  are  told  that  she  "  reads 
very  prettily  ";  after  that  her  home  was  all  in  all 
to  her  for  many  years,  with  a  brief  interval  of 
three  unhappy  months  at  Miss  Wooler's  school. 
Then  came  certain  miserable  months  as  a  govern- 
ess at  Law  Hill,  near  Halifax,^  and  a  happier  in- 

^  Charlotte  writes  from  Dewsbury  Moor  (October  2,  1836) : — 
"My  sister  Emily  is  gone  into  a  situation  as  teacher  in  a  large 
school  of  near  forty  pupils,  near  Halifax.  I  have  had  one 
letter  from  her  since  her  departure — it  gives  an  appalling  ac- 
count of  her  duties.  Hard  labour  from  six  in  the  morning  until 
near  eleven  at  night,  with  only  one  half-hour  of  exercise  be- 
tween. This  is  slavery.  I  fear  she  will  never  stand  it." — 
Mrs.  Gaskell's  Life. 


128  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

terval  of  a  year  in  Brussels.  Very  scanty,  indeed, 
is  the  record  of  these  episodes.  Only  when  her  sis- 
ters had  persuaded  her  to  face  the  world  in  print 
does  the  picture  become  clearer.  Take  for  ex- 
ample the  following  from  a  letter  of  Charlotte's 
to  Mr.  Williams : — 

"  I  should  much — very  much — like  to  take  that 
quiet  view  of  the  '  great  world  '  you  allude  to,  but 
I  have  as  yet  won  no  right  to  give  myself  such  a 
treat:  it  must  be  for  some  future  day — when,  I 
don't  know.  Ellis,  I  imagine,  would  soon  turn 
aside  from  the  spectacle  in  disgust.  I  do  not  think 
he  admits  it  as  his  creed  that  '  the  proper  study  of 
mankind  is  man  ' — at  least  not  the  artificial  man  of 
cities.  In  some  points  I  consider  Ellis  somewhat 
of  a  theorist:  now  and  then  he  broaches  ideas 
which  strike  my  sense  as  much  more  daring  and 
original  than  practical;  his  reason  may  be  in  ad- 
vance of  mine,  but  certainly  it  often  travels  a  dif- 
ferent road.  I  should  say  EUis  will  not  be  seen  in 
his  full  strength  till  he  is  seen  as  an  essayist." 

And  this  sadder  passage  from  a  letter  to  Miss 
Ellen  Nussey: — 


WUTHERING    HEIGHTS  129 

"  I  feel  much  more  uneasy  about  my  sisters  than 
myself  just  now.  Emily's  cold  and  cough  are  very 
obstinate.  I  fear  she  has  pain  In  the  chest,  and  I 
sometimes  catch  a  shortness  In  her  breathing,  when 
she  has  moved  at  all  quickly.  She  looks  very,  very 
thin  and  pale.  Her  reserved  nature  occasions  me 
great  uneasiness  of  mind.  It  Is  useless  to  question 
her — you  get  no  answers.  It  Is  still  more  useless 
to  recommend  remedies — they  are  never  adopted.'' 

And  again  to  Mr.  Williams : — 

"  I  would  fain  hope  that  Emily  Is  a  little  better 
this  evening,  but  It  Is  difficult  to  ascertain  this.  She 
Is  a  real  stoic  In  Illness :  she  neither  seeks  nor  will 
accept  sympathy.  To  put  any  questions,  to  offer 
any  aid.  Is  to  annoy ;  she  will  not  yield  a  step  before 
pain  or  sickness  till  forced;  not  one  of  her  ordi- 
nary avocations  will  she  voluntarily  renounce.  You 
must  look  on  and  see  her  do  what  she  Is  unfit  to  do, 
and  not  dare  to  say  a  word — a  painful  necessity 
for  those  to  whom  her  health  and  existence  are  as 
precious  as  the  life  In  their  veins.  When  she  is  ill 
there  seems  to  be  no  sunshine  in  the  world  for  me. 
The  tie  of  sister  is  near  and  dear  indeed,  and  I 


I30  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

think  a  certain  harshness  in  her  powerful  and  pe- 
culiar character  only  makes  me  cling  to  her  more. 
But  this  is  all  family  egotism  (so  to  speak) — ex- 
cuse it,  and,  above  all,  never  allude  to  it,  or  to  the 
name  Emily,  when  you  write  to  me.  I  do  not  al- 
ways show  your  letters,  but  I  never  withhold  them 
when  they  are  inquired  after."  ^ 

Then  we  have  the  remarkable  passage  in  a  fur- 
ther letter  to  Mr.  Williams : — 

"  The  North  American  Review  is  worth  read- 
ing; there  is  no  mincing  the  matter  there.  What  a 
bad  set  the  Bells  must  be !  What  appalling  books 
they  write!  To-day,  as  Emily  appeared  a  little 
easier,  I  thought  the  Review  would  amuse  her,  so 
I  read  it  aloud  to  her  and  Anne.  As  I  sat  between 
them  at  our  quiet  but  now  somewhat  melancholy 
fireside,  I  studied  the  two  ferocious  authors.  Ellis, 
the  *  man  of  uncommon  talents,  but  dogged,  bru- 
tal, and  morose,'  sat  leaning  back  in  his  easy  chair 
drawing  his  impeded  breath  as  he  best  could, 
and  looking,  alas !  piteously  pale  and  wasted ;  it  is 
not  his  wont  to  laugh,  but  he  smiled  half-amused 

1  Charlotte  Bronte  and  her  Circle. 


WUTHERING    HEIGHTS  131 

and  half  In  scorn  as  he  listened.  Acton  was  sew- 
ing, no  emotion  ever  stirs  him  to  loquacity,  so  he 
only  smiled  too,  dropping  at  the  same  time  a  single 
word  of  calm  amazement  to  hear  his  character  so 
darkly  portrayed.  I  wonder  what  the  reviewer 
would  have  thought  of  his  own  sagacity  could  he 
have  beheld  the  pair  as  I  did.  Vainly,  too,  might 
he  have  looked  round  for  the  masculine  partner  In 
the  firm  of  '  Bell  &  Co.'  How  I  laugh  In  my  sleeve 
when  I  read  the  solemn  assertions  that  Jane  Eyre 
was  written  In  partnership,  and  that  It  '  bears  the 
marks  of  more  than  one  mind  and  one  sex.' 

"  The  wise  critics  would  certainly  sink  a  degree 
in  their  own  estimation  If  they  knew  that  yours  or 
Mr.  Smith's  was  the  first  masculine  hand  that 
touched  the  MS.  of  Jane  Eyre,  and  that  till  you  or 
he  read  It  no  masculine  eye  had  scanned  a  line  of 
its  contents,  no  masculine  ear  heard  a  phrase  from 
its  pages.  However,  the  view  they  take  of  the 
matter  rather  pleases  me  than  otherwise.  If  they 
like,  I  am  not  unwilling  they  should  think  a  dozen 
ladles  and  gentlemen  aided  at  the  compilation  of 
the  book.    Strange  patchwork  it  must  seem  to  them 


132  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

— this  chapter  being  penned  by  Mr.,  and  that  by 
Miss  or  Mrs.  Bell;  that  character  or  scene  being 
delineated  by  the  husband,  that  other  by  the  wife ! 
The  gentleman,  of  course,  doing  the  rough  work, 
the  lady  getting  up  the  finer  parts.  I  admire  the 
idea  vastly." 

And  the  final  scene  in  a  letter  written  December 
25,  1848.    Emily  having  died  on  the  19th: — 

*'  Emily  is  nowhere  here  now,  her  wasted  mor- 
tal remains  are  taken  out  of  the  house.  We  have 
laid  her  cherished  head  under  the  church  aisle  be- 
side my  mother's,  my  two  sisters' — dead  long  ago 
— and  my  poor,  hapless  brother's.  But  a  small 
remnant  of  the  race  is  left — so  my  poor  father 
thinks. 

"  Well,  the  loss  Is  ours,  not  hers,  and  some  sad 
comfort  I  take,  as  I  hear  the  wind  blow  and  feel 
the  cutting  keenness  of  the  frost,  in  knowing  that 
the  elements  bring  her  no  more  suffering ;  their  se- 
verity cannot  reach  her  grave ;  her  fever  is  quieted, 
her  restlessness  soothed,  her  deep,  hollow  cough  is 
hushed  for  ever ;  we  do  not  hear  it  in  the  night  nor 
listen  for  it  in  the  morning;  we  have  not  the  con- 


WUTHERING    HEIGHTS  133 

flict  of  the  strangely  strong  spirit  and  the  fragile 
frame  before  us — relentless  conflict — once  seen, 
never  to  be  forgotten.  A  dreary  calm  reigns  round 
us,  in  the  midst  of  which  we  seek  resignation. 

"  I  will  not  now  ask  why  Emily  was  torn  from 
us  in  the  fullness  of  our  attachment,  rooted  up  in 
the  prime  of  her  own  days,  in  the  promise  of  her 
powers;  why  her  existence  now  lies  like  a  field  of 
green  corn  trodden  down,  like  a  tree  in  full  bearing 
struck  at  the  root.  I  will  only  say,  sweet  is  rest 
after  labour  and  calm  after  tempest,  and  repeat 
again  and  again  that  Emily  knows  that  now."  ^ 

To  add  anything  to  these  words  of  Charlotte 
Bronte's  would  be  little  less  than  sacrilege.  Emily 
died  young,  but  she  left  behind  her  some  imperish- 
able poems  and  an  equally  Imperishable  novel,  of 
which  Mr.  Swinburne  has  written:  "  It  may  be 
true  that  not  many  will  ever  take  it  to  their  hearts ; 
it  is  certain  that  those  who  do  like  it  will  like 
nothing  very  much  better  in  the  whole  world  of 
poetry  or  prose." 

1  Letter  to  Mr.  W.  S.  Williams  in  Charlotte  Bronte  and  her 
Circle. 


CHAPTER   XII 

ANNE   BRONTE 

Those  who  write  or  talk  as  If  books  live  only 
by  their  intrinsic  merits,  ignore  the  fact  that  a  very 
slight  accident  may  often  cause  the  survival  of  a 
work  of  very  moderate  power.  There  cannot  be 
a  doubt,  for  example,  but  that  the  novels  of  Anne 
Bronte  would  scarcely  have  maintained  their  place 
had  their  author  been  an  isolated  writer  unsupport- 
ed by  the  environment  that  Mrs.  Gaskell's  biogra- 
phy has  made  familiar  to  us  all.  Such  books  as 
Jane  Eyre  and  Villette,  Shirley  and  Wuthering 
Heights  must  in  any  case  have  been  certain  of  a 
permanent  place  in  literature,  but  Anne  Bronte's 
Agnes  Grey  and  The  Tenant  of  Wild  fell  Hall 
would  almost  undoubtedly  have  died.  There 
seems,  If  we  examine  them  carefully,  less  reason 
for  their  survival  than  for  the  works  of  Mrs. 
Marsh  and  Miss  Kavanagh,  books  that  had  a  very 

134 


ANNE    BRONTE  135 

great  vogue  In  the  ''  forties  "  and  "  fifties."  Let 
us  grant  then  that  Anne  Bronte's  stories  are  not 
great  books ;  they  nevertheless  attract  us  by  virtue 
of  their  autobiographical  character,  and  they  make 
pleasant  unpretentious  reading  even  to-day.  Agnes 
Grey,  the  first  of  them,  was,  as  we  have  seen, 
bound  up  with  JVuthering  Heights,  and  such  Is  the 
frequent  futility  of  contemporary  criticism  that  It 
is  not  surprising  that  many  reviewers  found  it  pref- 
erable to  the  titanic  story  that  accompanied  it. 
The  Tenant  of  Wild  fell  Hall  had  indeed  one  very 
frank  critic  who  loved  Its  author.  It  was  pro- 
nounced "  scarcely  worth  republication  "  by  Anne's 
devoted  sister  Charlotte  when  she  wrote  a  preface 
to  a  new  edition  of  It.  Yet  such  Is  the  "  glamour  " 
of  the  Brontes,  that  edition  after  edition  of  the 
book  has  been  issued  and  sold  In  our  time,  the  ex- 
haustion of  the  copyright  forty-two  years  after  first 
publication  having  given  occasion  for  at  least  four 
or  five  new  Issues  by  separate  publishers.  Here 
then  It  Is  clearly  imperative  to  recognize  the  po- 
tency of  the  personal  element  In  literature. 

Both  the  novels  of  Anne  Bronte  are  transcripts 


136  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

of  the  life  she  knew  and  little  more.  This  is  the 
factor  that  differentiates  the  man  or  woman  of 
genius  from  the  merely  average  writer.  Anne  was 
not  capable  of  transmuting  experience  through 
that  wonderful  crucible  that  produces  the  highest 
truth  of  literature,  that  subtle  presentation  which 
carries  conviction  to  our  souls  and  makes  us  say — 
here  is  great  art.  She  had  no  genius,  no  passion. 
The  photographic  quality  that  she  possessed  has, 
however,  its  value.  We  go  to  Anne  Bronte  more 
readily  than  to  Charlotte  and  Emily  for  a  picture 
of  what  life  was  Hke  for  a  nursery  governess  in  the 
"  forties,"  and  we  find  her  pictures  in  Agnes  Grey 
thoroughly  interesting  in  consequence;  we  may  go 
to  her  also  for  a  very  clear  impression  of  the  family 
circle  at  Haworth,  and  of  the  life  she  saw  and 
heard  of  outside  the  rectory  walls,  when  we  read 
The  Tenant  of  JVildfell  Hall  If  there  is  little 
imagination,  there  is  at  least  a  clear  narrative  of 
her  brother's  escapades  as  far  as  she  had  compre- 
hended them,  adding  thereto,  as  she  doubtless  did, 
sundry  episodes  in  the  lives  of  others  that  scandal 
had  conveyed  to  her. 


ANNE    BRONTE  137 

But  it  Is  scarcely  necessary  to  take  the  novels 
of  Anne  Bronte  too  seriously,  even  were  criticism 
the  province  of  this  little  biography,  which  it  is  not. 
It  suffices  that  she  was  a  softening,  benign  atmos- 
phere In  a  house  where  father,  aunt  and  elder  sis- 
ters, whatever  their  other  fine  qualities,  would  seem 
to  have  lacked  softness  and  benignity.  The  father 
was  ever  an  egoist,  the  aunt  the  embodiment  of 
kindness,  but  severe,  Charlotte,  as  we  know,  was 
strenuous,  and  Emily  profoundly  melancholy.  But 
Mr.  NIcholls,  writing  fifty  years  after  her  death, 
recalled  the  ''  gentle  "  Anne;  and  that  influence  of 
gentleness  must  have  run  like  a  silken  cord  through 
the  somewhat  tumultuous  lives  of  the  two  clever 
sisters,  both  of  whom  had  hearts  ever  aflame,  im- 
aginations ever  alert  for  action  outside  the  narrow 
walls  of  that  simple  prosaic  home. 

Emily,  we  are  told,  was  inseparable  from  Anne 
in  the  years  during  which  the  elder  sister  Charlotte 
seemed  to  lean  upon  some  friend  from  the  outer 
world — Ellen  Nussey,  Mary  Taylor,  or  Laetltia 
Wheelwright.  Charlotte  had  a  gift  for  friendship 
which  stood  her  in  good  stead  when  she  found  her- 


ijS  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

self  alone  in  the  world.  Her  sisters  had  not  this 
gift,  and  were  thrown  back  upon  one  another's 
company. 

Anne  Bronte,  as  we  have  seen,  was  carried  as  a 
baby  from  Thornton  to  Haworth  while  her  moth- 
er's life  was  ebbing  away.  Perhaps  this  was  why 
she  was  her  aunt's  favourite,  always  by  her  side  in 
her  earliest  years.  Later  she  and  Emily  were  in- 
separable. We  know  next  to  nothing  of  Anne's 
experiences  as  governess,  first  with  Mrs.  Ingram 
of  Blake  Hall,  and  next  with  Mrs.  Robinson  at 
Thorpe  Green.  Indeed  it  is  only  from  Charlotte's 
letters  that  we  learn  anything  of  material  impor- 
tance concerning  Anne,  although  Miss  Nussey 
writes  of  the  youngest  sister  as  so  much  the  "  pret- 
tiest "  of  the  three,  with  "  light  brown  hair,  violet 
blue  eyes  and  pencilled  eyebrows,  and  an  almost 
transparent  complexion."  One  would  have  liked  to 
have  heard  Anne's  version  of  that  sordid  drama  at 
Thorpe  Green,  where  Branwell  was,  or  professed 
to  be,  carrying  on  a  flirtation  with  the  mistress 
of  the  house.  Anne  must  have  seen  something 
to  vex  her  innocent  soul,  or  she  would  on  her 


ANNE    BRONTE  139 

return  to  Haworth  have  insisted  that  Branwell's 
"  love  story  "  was  purely  imaginary.  It  was  the 
attitude  of  Anne  on  this  subject  that  persuaded 
Mr.  Nicholls,  with  whom  I  discussed  the  question, 
that  Branwell  was  not  entirely  to  blame,  that  there 
had  at  least  been  some  indiscreet  flirtation,  calcu- 
lated to  disarrange  further  an  already  ill-balanced 
mind. 

Writing  in  her  diary  in  July,  1845,  Anne 
says,  recalling  what  she  had  written  four  years 
earlier : — 

"  How  many  things  have  happened  since  it  was 
written — some  pleasant,  some  far  otherwise.  Yet 
I  was  then  at  Thorpe  Green,  and  now  I  am  only 
just  escaped  from  it.  I  was  wishing  to  leave  it 
then,  and  if  I  had  known  that  I  had  four  years 
longer  to  stay  how  wretched  I  should  have  been; 
but  during  my  stay  I  have  had  some  very  unpleas- 
ant and  undreamt-of  experience  of  human  nature. 
Others  have  seen  more  changes.  Charlotte  has  left 
Mr.  White's  and  been  twice  to  Brussels,  where  she 
stayed  each  time  nearly  a  year.  Emily  has  been 
there  too,  and  stayed  nearly  a  year.     Branwell  has 


I40  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

left  Luddendenfoot,  and  been  a  tutor  at  Thorpe 
Green,  and  had  much  tribulation  and  ill  health. 
He  was  very  ill  on  Thursday,  but  he  went  with 
John  Brown  to  Liverpool,  where  he  now  is,  I  sup- 
pose ;  and  we  hope  he  will  be  better  and  do  better 
in  future.  This  is  a  dismal,  cloudy,  wet  even- 
ing. We  have  had  so  far  a  very  cold  wet  summer. 
Charlotte  has  lately  been  to  Hathersage,  in  Derby- 
shire, on  a  visit  of  three  weeks  to  Ellen  Nussey. 
She  is  now  sitting  sewing  in  the  dining-room. 
Emily  is  ironing  upstairs.  I  am  sitting  in  the  din- 
ing-room in  the  rocking-chair  before  the  fire  with 
my  feet  on  the  fender.  Papa  is  in  the  parlour. 
Tabby  and  Martha  are,  I  think,  in  the  kitchen. 
Keeper  and  Flossy  are,  I  do  not  know  where.  Lit- 
tle Dick  is  hopping  in  his  cage.  When  the  last  pa- 
per was  written  we  were  thinking  of  setting  up  a 
school.  The  scheme  has  been  dropped,  and  long 
after  taken  up  again  and  dropped  again  because  we 
could  not  get  pupils.  Charlotte  is  thinking  about 
getting  another  situation.  She  wishes  to  go  to 
Paris.  Will  she  go  ?  She  has  let  Flossy  in,  by-the- 
by,  and  she  is  now  lying  on  the  sofa.     Emily  is  en- 


ANNE    BRONTE  141 

gaged  In  writing  the  Emperor  Julius's  life.  She 
has  read  some  of  It,  and  I  want  very  much  to  hear 
the  rest.  She  Is  writing  some  poetry,  too.  I  won- 
der what  It  Is  about?  I  have  begun  the  third 
volume  of  Passages  in  the  Life  of  an  Individual. 
I  wish  I  had  finished  It.  This  afternoon  I  began 
to  set  about  making  my  grey  figured  silk  frock 
that  was  dyed  at  Kelghley.  What  sort  of  a  hand 
shall  I  make  of  it?"^ 

This  Is  but  a  fragment  of  the  published  diary, 
but  It  contains  many  points  of  Interest.  The  "  very 
unpleasant  and  undreamt-of  experience  of  human 
nature  "  must  have  referred  to  the  trouble  between 
her  brother  and  the  mother  of  her  pupils.  The 
speculation  as  to  Charlotte's  going  to  Paris  Is  note- 
worthy. Instead  of  that,  Charlotte  and  her  sisters 
published  poems  and  novels,  with  the  result  that 
we  all  know.  The  Poems  appeared  the  following 
year,  Jane  Eyre  in  October,  1847,  ^^^  Agnes  Grey 
in  December.  The  two  editions  of  The  Tenant  of 
JVildfell  Hall  appeared  In  1848,  the  year  that 
Branwell  and  Emily  died,  and  Anne  followed  her 

^  Charlotte  Bronte  and  Her  Circle. 


142  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

brother  and  sister  in  1849.  As  we  have  traced 
Emily's  pathway  to  the  grave,  so  we  may  trace 
Anne's  In  her  sister's  melancholy  letters : — 

"  Anne  and  I  sit  alone  and  in  seclusion  as  you 
fancy  us,  but  we  do  not  study.  Anne  cannot  study 
now,  she  can  scarcely  read;  she  occupies  Emily's 
chair ;  she  does  not  get  well.  A  week  ago  we  sent 
for  a  medical  man  of  skill  and  experience  from 
Leeds  to  see  her.  He  examined  her  with  the  steth- 
oscope. His  report  I  forbear  to  dwell  on  for  the 
present — even  skilful  physicians  have  often  been 
mistaken  in  their  conjectures. 

*'  My  first  Impulse  was  to  hasten  her  away  to  a 
warmer  climate,  but  this  was  forbidden :  she  must 
not  travel;  she  is  not  to  stir  from  the  house  this 
winter ;  the  temperature  of  her  room  is  to  be  kept 
constantly  equal. 

"  When  we  lost  Emily  I  thought  we  had  drained 
the  very  dregs  of  our  cup  of  trial,  but  now  when  I 
hear  Anne  cough  as  Emily  coughed,  I  tremble  lest 
there  should  be  exquisite  bitterness  yet  to  taste. 
However,  I  must  not  look  forwards,  nor  must  I 
look  backwards.    Too  often  I  feel  like  one  cross- 


ANNE    BRONTE  143 

ing  an  abyss  on  a  narrow  plank — a  glance  round 
might  quite  unnerve. 

"  Anne  is  very  patient  In  her  illness,  as  patient 
as  Emily  was  unflinching.  I  recall  one  sister  and 
look  at  the  other  with  a  sort  of  reverence  as  well  as 
affection — under  the  test  of  suffering — neither  has 
faltered. 

"  Anne  continues  a  little  better — the  mild 
weather  suits  her.  At  times  I  hear  the  renewal  of 
hope's  whisper,  but  I  dare  not  listen  too  fondly; 
she  deceived  me  cruelly  before.  A  sudden  change 
to  cold  would  be  the  test.  I  dread  such  change, 
but  must  not  anticipate.  Spring  lies  before  us,  and 
then  summer — surely  we  may  hope  a  little !  '' 

But  hope  was  slight  Indeed,  as  a  letter  to  Ellen 
Nussey,  describing  a  projected  visit  to  Scarbor- 
ough, indicated.  Anne  had  been  to  Scarborough 
three  or  four  times  during  her  governess  days,  and 
wished  to  see  the  place  again.  After  stating  that 
they  had  secured  rooms  on  the  cliffs  with  a  sea  view, 
she  continues : — 

"  If  Anne  Is  to  get  any  good  she  must  have 
every  advantage.     Miss  Outhwaite,  her  godmoth- 


144  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

er,  left  her  in  her  will  a  legacy  of  £200,  and  she 
cannot  employ  her  money  better  than  in  obtaining 
what  may  prolong  existence,  if  it  does  not  restore 
health.  We  hope  to  leave  home  on  the  23rd,  and 
I  think  it  will  be  advisable  to  rest  at  York,  and  stay 
all  night  there.  I  hope  this  arrangement  will  suit 
you.  We  reckon  on  your  society,  dear  Ellen,  as  a 
real  privilege  and  pleasure.  We  shall  take  little 
luggage,  and  shall  have  to  buy  bonnets  and  dresses 
and  several  other  things  either  at  York  or  Scar- 
boro';  which  place  do  you  think  would  be  best? 
Oh,  if  it  would  please  God  to  strengthen  and  revive 
Anne,  how  happy  we  might  be  together !  His  will, 
however,  must  be  done,  and  if  she  is  not  to  recover, 
it  remains  to  pray  for  strength  and  patience." 

Then  we  have  a  letter  from  Scarborough  to  Mr. 
Smith  Williams : — 

'*  I  am  thankful  to  say  we  reached  our  destina- 
tion safely,  having  rested  one  night  at  York.  We 
found  assistance  wherever  we  needed  it ;  there  was 
always  an  arm  ready  to  do  for  my  sister  what  I 
was  not  quite  strong  enough  to  do :  lift  her  in  and 
out  of  the  carriage,  carry  her  across  the  line,  etc. 


ANNE    BRONTE  145 

"  It  made  her  happy  to  see  both  York  and  its 
Minster,  and  Scarboro'  and  its  bay  once  more. 
There  is  yet  no  revival  of  bodily  strength — I  fear 
indeed  the  slow  ebb  continues.  People  who  see  her 
tell  me  I  must  not  expect  her  to  last  long — ^but  it  is 
something  to  cheer  her  mind. 

"  Our  lodgings  are  pleasant.  As  Anne  sits  at 
the  window  she  can  look  down  on  the  sea,  which 
this  morning  is  calm  as  glass.  She  says  if  she  could 
breathe  more  freely  she  would  be  comfortable  at 
this  moment — but  she  cannot  breathe  freely. 

"  My  friend  Ellen  is  with  us.  I  find  her  pres- 
ence a  solace.  She  is  a  calm,  steady  girl — not  bril- 
liant, but  good  and  true.  She  suits  and  has  always 
suited  me  well.  I  like  her,  with  her  phlegm,  re- 
pose, sense,  and  sincerity,  better  than  I  should  like 
the  most  talented  without  these  qualifications.'' 

And  then  the  scene  closes  with  this  last  little 
note,  written  to  her  friend  Mr.  Williams : — 

"  My  dear  Sir, — My  poor  sister  is  taken  quiet- 
ly home  at  last.  She  died  on  Monday.  With  al- 
most her  last  breath  she  said  she  was  happy,  and 


146  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

thanked  God  that  death  was  come,  and  come  so 
gently.    I  did  not  think  it  would  be  so  soon." 

Anne  Bronte  is  buried  in  Scarborough  Church- 
yard, where  the  inscription  on  her  tomb  runs  as 
follows : — 

"  Here  lie  the  remains  of  Anne  Bronte,  daugh- 
ter of  the  Rev.  P.  Bronte,  Incumbent  of  Haworth, 
Yorkshire.    She  died,  aged  28,  May  28th,  1849." 

She  also  left  behind  her  some  "  last  verses," 
which  have  found  their  way  into  the  hymnologies 
of  many  of  the  Churches : — 

I  hoped  that  with  the  brave  and  strong 

My  portioned  task  may  lie, 
To  toil  amid  the  busy  throng 

With  purpose  pure  and  high. 


CHAPTER    XIII 

JANE  EYRE 

Charlotte  Bronte  was  thirty-one  years  and 
SIX  months  old  when  Jane  Eyre  was  published.  The 
passing  of  her  first  novel  from  publisher  to  pub- 
lisher has  already  been  noted.  In  a  fortunate  hour 
the  manuscript  of  The  Professor  fell  into  the  hands 
of  Mr.  Smith  Williams  the  "  reader ''  to  Smith, 
Elder  &  Co.  Mr.  Williams,  who  was  born  in 
1800  and  died  in  1875,  possessed  a  genuine  liter- 
ary faculty.  He  was  the  brother-in-law  of  Charles 
Wells,  the  author  of  Joseph  and  his  Brethren, 
When  Keats  left  England  for  an  early  grave  in 
Rome  it  was  Mr.  Williams  who  saw  him  off. 
Hazlitt,  Leigh  Hunt,  Thackeray  and  Ruskin  val- 
ued highly  his  judgment.  He  compiled  a  volume 
of  Selections  from  Mr.  Ruskin's  writings  which  Is 
still  much  prized  by  the  curious.  The  publisher's 
"  reader  "  or  book-taster  Is  but  human,  and  often 

147 


148  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

makes  mistakes.  Certainly  the  five  readers  of  the 
five  publishing  houses  which  sent  back  The  Pro- 
fessor with  curt  refusals  had  reasons  for  regret- 
ting their  mistake  In  this  Instance — even  from  a 
merely  commercial  point  of  vlew,^  and  perhaps 
more  from  the  point  of  view  of  glory. 

Mr.  Williams  recognized  the  undoubted  ability 
of  The  Professor^  but  those  were  the  days  when 
the  three-volumed  novel  was  a  fetish.  We  have 
seen  the  way  in  which  Mr.  Newby  bound  up  Wuth- 
ering  Heights  and  Agnes  Grey  In  order  to  make 
them  look  like  a  single  three-volumed  book.  By 
no  possibility  could  The  Professor  have  been  made 
to  stretch  to  more  than  two  volumes.  Besides  this, 
although  Mr.  Williams  liked  It  another  Influential 
member  of  the  staff,  Mr.  James  Taylor,  did  not, 
and  after  both  had  reported  to  their  "  chief," 

^  The  total  sum  paid  for  the  entire  copyright  of  Charlotte 
Bronte's  four  novels  was  £i,ys^ — £5^'^  ^^ch  for  Jane  Eyre, 
Shirley  and  Fillettey  and  ;^25o  for  The  Professor.     In  the  year 
i860 — twelve  years  after  the  publication  of  Jane  Eyre — the  ; 
publishers  admitted  to  having  made  a  clear  profit  of  ;^io,ooo.| 
Mr.  George  Smith  was  once  oflFered  ^^500  for  the  manuscript  | 
of  Jane  Eyre. 


JANE    EYRE  149 

Mr.  George  Smith,  the  letter  went  forth  from  the 
office  In  Cornhill  which  was  to  bring  yet  another 
refusal  to  the  mysterious  but  ever  persevering  Mr. 
Currer  Bell  at  Haworth.  But  Currer  Bell  after- 
wards declared  In  print  that  this  refusal  was 
"  couched  In  language  so  delicate,  reasonable  and 
courteous,  as  to  be  more  cheering  than  some  ac- 
ceptances." It  assigned  a  lack  of  varied  interest  in 
the  tale  as  well  as  the  length  as  the  cause  of  rejec- 
tion, therefore  Currer  Bell  replied  that  he  had 
nearly  completed  a  novel  In  three  volumes,  and 
this  Mr.  Williams  asked  to  see. 

On  August  24,  1847,  the  manuscript  of  Jane 
Eyre  was  sent  to  Cornhill,  and  then  there  was  no 
hesitation.  The  author  was  reading  proof  sheets 
during  September,  and  In  the  middle  of  October 
the  book  was  published.  The  critics  were  enthu- 
siastic, the  public  more  so.  "  The  most  extraordi- 1 
nary  production  that  has  issued  from  the  press  for 
years,"  said  the  Weekly  Chronicle,  "  Decidedly 
the  best  novel  of  the  season,"  said  the  Westminster 
Review.  In  looking  through  these  old  reviews 
one  is  struck  by  their  judgment  and  insight.     If 


I50  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

there  was  good  creative  work  produced  in  the  "  for- 
ties "  and  "  fifties/'  there  was  also  good  criticism. 
Miss  Bronte  enjoyed  to  the  full  the  burst  of 
sympathetic  and  appreciative  criticism  that  came  to 
her.  Perhaps  the  critique  that  delighted  her  most 
was  one  by  Eugene  Forcade  in  the  Revue  des  Deux 
Mondes,  the  one  that  gave  her  actual  and  indeed 
deep-rooted  pain  the  article  by  Miss  Rigby  in  the 
Quarterly  Review,  "  The  subtle-thoughted,  keen- 
eyed,  quick-feeling  Frenchman  "  is  her  judgment 
of  Forcade,  and  his  notice  of  Jane  Eyre  is  "  the 
most  acceptable  to  the  author  of  any  that  has  yet 
appeared."  ^  As  for  the  review  of  Jane  Eyre  in 
the  Quarterly,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  it  al- 
most made  Charlotte  Bronte  repent  its  authorship. 
Yet  Miss  Rigby  wrote  with  no  desire  to  be  other 
than  fair.  She  was  a  staunch  Conservative,  and 
the  book  seemed  to  her  to  be  wildly  Radical.  She 
believed  the  author  to  be  a  man — as  her  editor 
did  ^ — for  in  her  world  no  woman  was  so  ignorant 

^  Letter  to  W.  S.  Williams,  November  i6,  1848. 

2  Lockhart,  her  editor,  writes  as  follows  to  his  contributor, 
Miss  Rigby,  after  he  had  received  the  first  part  of  her  review: — 
"I  know  nothing  of  the  writers,  but  the  common  rumour  is  that 


JANE    EYRE  151 

of  the  daintier  aspects  of  life :  the  fitting  garment 
for  this  or  that  occasion,  the  delicacies  of  refined 
cookery!  How  could  Miss  Rigby  have  guessed 
that  it  was  the  timid,  sensitive  daughter  of  a  coun- 
try clergyman,  herself  a  warm  adherent  of  Church 
and  State,  who  had  written  this  extraordinary 
book !  The  author  she  thought  was  clearly  a  man, 
and  if  it  had  been  a  man  the  sentence  that  so  pained 
Miss  Bronte — the  suggestion  that  if  the  author 
were  a  woman  it  must  be  one  "  who  had  forfeited 
the  society  of  her  sex  " — would  have  fallen  harm- 
less. The  sentence  was  not  more  cruelly  personal 
than  every  author  was  liable  to  suffer  from  in  those 
days.    A  certain  great  historian  did  not,  we  may 

they  are  brothers  of  the  weaving  order  in  some  Lancashire  town. 
At  first  it  was  generally  said  Currer  was  a  lady,  and  Mayfair 
circumstantializes  by  making  her  the  chere  amie  of  Mr.  Thack- 
eray. But  your  skill  in  "dress"  settles  the  question  of  sex.  I 
think,  however,  some  women  must  have  assisted  in  the  school 
scenes  oijane  Eyre,  which  have  a  striking  air  of  truthfulness  to 
me.  I  should  say  you  might  as  well  glance  at  the  novels  by 
Acton  and  Ellis  'QtW—Wuthering  Heights  is  one  of  them.  If 
you  have  any  friend  about  Manchester,  it  would,  I  suppose,  be 
easy  to  learn  accurately  as  to  the  position  of  these  men." — Jour- 
nals and  Correspondence  of  Lady  Eastlake,  edited  by  her  nephew, 
Charles  Eastlake  Smith,  1895. 


152  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

be  sure,  enjoy  being  called  "  Mr.  Babbletongue 
Macaulay  "  by  The  Times.  In  any  case,  many 
compensations  for  a  young  writer  might  have  been 
found  in  the  Quarterly  article  had  not  the  author 
criticized  been  the  sensitive  Charlotte  Bronte. 
The  ''  equal  popularity  "  of  Jane  Eyre  and  Vanity 
Fair  is  referred  to,  and  the  reviewer  admits  that 
the  book  is  "  remarkable."  It  is  true  that  she  adds 
that  *'  we  have  no  remembrance  of  another  con- 
taining such  undoubted  power  with  such  horrid 
taste."  Certainly  judged  by  the  standards — the 
Conservative  standards — of  those  days,  when  the 
majority  of  well-nurtured  women  were  brought  up 
on  strictly  conventional  lines,  the  taste  of  the  book 
was  bound  to  be  called  in  question,  and  the  critic 
who  did  so  was  not  necessarily  a  "  nauseous  hypo- 
crite," as  Mr.  Augustine  Birrell  rather  extrava- 
gantly calls  her.  A  generation  that  has  been 
brought  up  upon  "  sex  "  novels  has  other  stand- 
ards of  taste.  It  was  its  very  unconventionality 
which  made  the  book  so  popular  sixty  years  since. 
What  is  it  that  makes  the  book's  appeal  to  us 
to-day  ? 


JANE    EYRE  153 

To  those  who  take  no  account  of  the  qualities  of 
style,  imagination  and  "  point  of  view  "  in  litera- 
ture, Jane  Eyre  would  now  make  no  appeal.  To 
such,  Hamlet  would  make  no  appeal.  Is  not  the 
whole  story  of  the  murdered  king,  the  son  who 
feigns  madness  to  revenge  his  father's  murder,  all 
set  down  for  us  in  Saxo  Grammaticus,  the  Danish 
chronicler?  In  the  actual  incidents,  in  the  plot  of 
Jane  Eyre  there  is  but  little  originality.  It  is 
called  "  an  autobiography,"  and  in  one  sense  it  is, 
as  are  all  Miss  Bronte's  books,  a  very  detailed  au- 
tobiography of  the  writer — of  her  reading  life  as 
well  as  of  her  actual  life.  The  period  during 
which  Jane  Eyre  was  at  Lowood  School  was  but 
a  reflection  of  Charlotte  Bronte's  actual  expe- 
riences at  Cowan  Bridge,  at  any  rate  of  her  idea 
of  the  school  as  it  came  back  to  her  after  an  in- 
terval of  more  than  twenty  years. 

It  is  quite  clear  that  her  wonderful  memory 
enabled  her  to  reproduce  much  of  that  child  life 
of  hers,  in  a  manner  for  the  accuracy  of  which 
credit  has  scarcely  been  given  until  quite  recently. 
A  student  of  the  Bronte  story,  Mr.  Angus  Mackay, 


154  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

has  however  unearthed  some  of  the  actual  literary 
efforts  of  the  Reverend  Carus  Wilson,  the  proto- 
type of  Mr.  Brocklehurst.^  This  critic  has  been 
studying  the  writings  of  Mr.  Wilson,  particularly 
certain  books  for  the  young  by  him,  which  Char- 
lotte Bronte  could  never  have  seen.  There  was 
one  called  Youthful  Memoirs ^  published  in  1828, 
full  of  deathbed  scenes  of  little  children,  all  of 
whom  were  made  to  be  singularly  in  love  with 
death.  One  little  boy  of  three  or  four  years  of 
age,  for  example,  when  asked  whether  he  would 
choose  death  or  life,  replied,  "  Death  for  me.  I 
am  fonder  of  death."  Mr.  Brocklehurst  says  to 
Jane  Eyre,  "  Children  younger  than  you  die  daily. 
/  I  burled  a  little  child  five  years  old  only  a  day  or 
[  two  since,  a  good  little  child,  whose  soul  is  now 
in  Heaven."  Mr.  Wilson's  Youthful  Memoirs 
is  full  of  the  deathbeds  of  these  good  little  chil- 
dren. He  says  to  Jane  Eyre,  "  You  have  a  wicked 
heart,  and  you  must  pray  God  to  change  it,  to 
give  you  a  new  and  clean  heart,  to  take  away 
your  heart  of  stone  and  give  you  a  heart  of  flesh." 
1  Mr.  J.  Angus  Mackay,  in  the  Bookman, 


JANE    EYRE  155 

Almost  these  exact  words  occur  in  three  of  the 
stories ;  one  of  the  little  girls  here  says  to  a  naughty 
companion  that  "  she  must  humble  her  pride  and 
pray  to  God,  and  He  would  be  sure  to  take  away 
her  heart  of  stone  and  give  her  a  heart  of  flesh." 
Mr.  Brocklehurst  says,  "  I  have  a  little  boy 
younger  than  you  who  knows  six  psalms  by  heart." 
There  are  a  number  of  such  little  boys  in  Youth- 
ful Memoirs.  At  the  close  of  the  interview  with 
Jane  Eyre,  Mr.  Brocklehurst  gives  her  a  tract 
entitled  "The  Child's  Guide;  containing  an  ac- 
count of  the  awfully  sudden  Death  of  Martha 
G.,  a  naughty  child  addicted  to  falsehood."  One 
of  Mr.  Wilson's  little  stories  is  actually  entitled 
An  Awful  History,  Altogether,  the  student  of 
this  unsavoury  literature,  Mr.  Angus  Mackay, 
has  proved  up  to  the  hilt,  long  after  the  con- 
troversy is  dead  and  buried,  that  Miss  Bronte's 
description  of  the  mental  attitude  of  Mr.  Ca- 
rus  Wilson  was  substantially  accurate,  however 
much  she  may  have  exaggerated  the  demerits  of 
the  place  itself;  and  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
the  original  of  the  heroic  Miss  Temple,  a  Mrs. 


156  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

Harben,  would  seem  to  have  repudiated  the  de- 
scription altogether. 

It  was  the  same  with  Miss  Bronte's  governess 
life,  a  hundred  disagreeable  incidents  of  which  are 
reflected  in  Jane  Eyre's  experiences  of  Mrs.  Reed. 
We  know  that  a  youthful  Sidgwick  threw  a  Bible 
at  Miss  Bronte  on  one  occasion,  as  John  Reed 
threw  a  copy  of  Bewick's  Birds  at  Jane  Eyre.  It 
is  little  to  the  point  that  Mrs.  Sidgwick  may  have 
been  one  of  the  kindest  and  best  of  women.  Miss 
Bronte  found  her  insufferable.  Well-nigh  every 
place  and  every  person  in  the  history  of  Jane  Eyre 
has  been  identified  with  a  prototype  in  the  life 
story  of  Charlotte  Bronte.  In  her  letters  Miss 
Bronte  writes  of  the  dark  face,  the  sardonic  hu- 
mour, the  masterful  manner  of  M.  Paul  Heger; 
in  her  book  she  attributes  these  qualities  to  Fairfax 
Rochester.  The  author  spends  three  weeks  at 
Hathersage  In  Derbyshire,  and  to  that  neighbour- 
hood she  turns  for  much  of  the  scenery  of  her 
novel.  Morton,  in  Jane  Eyre,  Is  easily  identified 
with  Hathersage;  the  one  is  ten  miles  from 
"  S ,"  the  other  twenty  miles  from  Sheffield. 


JANE    EYRE  157 

All  the  villagers  are  engaged  In  the  manufacture 
of  needles,  as  are  those  of  Hathersage  to-day. 
Thornfield  Hall,  the  seat  of  Mr.  Rochester,  has 
been  easily  Identified  with  Norton  Conyers  near 
Ripon,  which  was  In  Miss  Bronte's  day  the  seat  of 
Mr.  Greenwood,  the  father  of  Mrs.  SIdgwIck. 
Miss  Bronte  visited  the  house  when  staying  with 
her  pupils  at  Swarcllffe,  Mr.  Greenwood's  summer 
residence.  Mr.  Rochester's  other  house,  where 
Jane  Eyre  found  him  In  his  blindness,  Ferndean 
Manor,  Is  Wycollar  Hall  near  Colne,  a  hall  which 
Is  now  a  ruin,  but  which  has  attached  to  It  the 
story  of  a  madwoman  having  set  It  on  fire;  and 
also  the  tradition  that  the  original  owner,  Squire 
Cunllffe,  had  some  of  the  traits  associated  with 
Rochester.  Moor  House,  where  the  Rivers  fam- 
ily lived,  has  been  identified  with  Moor  Seats  near 
Hathersage;  Gateshead  Hall,  where  Mrs.  Reed 
lived,  has  been  Identified  with  Stonegappe  near 
Skipton,  where,  as  we  have  seen,  Charlotte  Bronte 
was  governess  to  the  SIdgwicks.  So  we  might  go 
on  for  every  village  and  every  house  mentioned 
in  the  novel.     As  it  is  with  place-names,  so  it  is 


158  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

with  persons.  For  the  raw  material  of  her  book 
Miss  Bronte  went  to  material  available  to  all  the 
world.  Some  time  ago  there  appeared  in  the  Sat- 
urday Review  a  letter  calling  attention  to  a  little 
book  entitled  Gleanings  in  Craven;  or,  The  Tour- 
ists' Guide.  In  this  book  may  be  found  the  names 
of  Sir  Ingram  Clifford,  of  Skipton  Castle ;  of  Miss 
Richardson  Currer,  of  Eshton  Hall;  and  many 
other  names  and  places  familiar  to  every  resident 
in  the  West  Riding  of  Yorkshire.  I  do  not  for  a 
moment  doubt  but  that  Miss  Bronte  had  read  this 
little  guide-book,  a  very  discursive  and  ineffective 
production,  although  for  the  name  of  Ingram  she 
need  not  have  gone  further  than  to  the  family 
doctor  to  Haworth  Parsonage,  Dr.  Ingram.  To 
describe  Gleanings  in  Craven  as  a  "  key  "  to  Jane 
Eyre  is,  however,  to  ignore  any  number  of  other 
"  keys  "  provided  by  the  long  years  of  apprentice- 
ship to  novel-writing.  I  am  not  disinclined  to 
think  indeed  that  whereas  she  had  often  heard  of 
Miss  Currer,  the  name  of  Bell  may  really  have 
been  suggested  to  her  by  the  little  book  on  Craven, 
where  there   is   a   reference  to  "  the  celebrated 


JANE    EYRE  159 

lawyer  and  one  of  his  late  Majesty's  Counsels,  the 
late  John  Bell,  Esqr."  It  has  been  stated  that  she 
took  the  name  of  Bell  from  the  second  name  of 
Mr.  Arthur  Bell  Nlcholls,  who  was  afterwards  to 
become  her  husband;  but  I  have  Mr.  Nicholls's 
assurance  that  this  was  not  the  case. 

I  have  said  that  there  are  many  "  keys  "  to 
Jane  Eyre.  One  may  find,  for  example,  in  Defoe's 
Moll  Flanders — a  book  which  Miss  Bronte  had 
of  course  read — a  parallel  incident  to  that  where 
Jane  hears  the  voice  of  Rochester  calling  her,  al- 
though he  is  many  miles  away. 

Moll  calls  in  distress  to  Jemmy,  her  "  Lanca- 
shire husband,"  and  Jemmy  hears  the  cry.  Moll, 
it  will  be  remembered,  burst  into  a  fit  of  crying, 
calling  him  by  his  name,  "  O  Jemmy!  come  back, 
come  back."  The  husband  returned  and  told  her 
that  twelve  miles  off  in  Delamere  Forest  he  had 
heard  her  calling  to  him  aloud,  and  that  he  had 
heard  her  voice  calling  "  O  Jemmy!  O  Jemmy! 
come  back,  come  back."  This  Is  not  the  only  point  in 
common  between  Moll  Flanders  and  Jajie  Eyre^  be- 
cause Moll  has  a  lover  at  Bath  who  has  a  "  distem- 


i6o  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

pered,"  Insane  wife,  and  begs  Moll  not  to  let  that 
be  a  bar  to  a  marriage ;  a  little  later,  she  is  wooed 
by  a  bank  clerk  whose  wife  is  unfaithful,  and  this 
man  begs  Moll  Flanders  to  marry  him  without 
waiting  for  his  divorce.  Such  parallels  have  a 
certain  literary  interest,  although  they  in  no  way 
reflect  upon  the  essential  originality  of  Jane  Eyre. 
Charlotte  Bronte's  love  of  the  preternatural  would 
have  induced  her  to  remember  that  incident  in 
Moll  Flanders^  although  Mrs.  Gaskell  records 
that  Miss  Bronte  once  referring  to  Jane  hearing 
Rochester's  voice  from  a  distance  of  many  miles, 
replied,  ''But,  it  is  a  true  thing;  it  really  hap- 
pened! "  Did  she  mean  by  that,  that  it  happened 
in  Defoe's  apparently  true  narrative,  or  that  it 
came  within  her  experience?  It  is  quite  possible 
that  it  did  come  within  her  experience,  and  in  any 
case  she  had  probably  forgotten  her  reading  of 
Moll  Flanders  when  she  sat  down  to  write  Jane 
Eyre. 

Certainly  she  must  have  read  from  the  Keighley 
Library  A  Sicilian  Romance^  by  Mrs.  Radcliffe, 
where  it  will  be  remembered  Count  Mazzini  shuts 


C4yA.. 


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The  first  page  of  the  Manuscript  of  Jane  Eyre 

The  Manuscript  is  in  the  possession  of  the  publishers.  Messrs.  Smith,  Elder  &  Co.     Mr. 


George  Smith  refused  ;C5oo  for  this  MS.,  the  actual  sum  pa 


id  for  the  original  novel 


I 


I 


JANE    EYRE  i6i 

up  his  wife  in  a  castle  for  fifteen  years,  although 
the  fact  is  unknown  to  the  rest  of  the  inhabitants, 
who  periodically  hear  noises  and  see  strange 
things.  Miss  Bronte  refers  to  Ann  Radcliffe  in 
Shirley,  where  Rose  Yorke  may  be  found  reading 
The  Italian.  In  addition  to  these  one  acute  critic  ^ 
has  found  traces  of  Richardson's  Pamela  and  Har- 
riet Martineau's  Deerbrook. 

The  real  power  of  Jane  Eyre  is  quite  unaffected 
by  such  small  points  as  these,  or  even  the,  to  me, 
more  interesting  point  as  to  the  original  of  St. 
John  Rivers,  one  of  the  most  striking  characters 
in  the  book.  Mrs.  Gaskell  started  the  idea  that 
Rivers  was  intended  for  Mr.  Henry  Nussey,  a 
clergyman  of  the  Church  of  England,  who  held 
the  living  of  Hathersage  for  a  time,  and  was  the 
brother  of  Charlotte  Bronte's  great  friend,  Ellen 
Nussey.  Mr.  Nussey,  we  know,  offered  marriage 
to  Charlotte  Bronte,  influenced  it  would  seem 
more  by  a  keen  desire  for  a  housekeeper  who 
would  look  after  the  schools  and  attend  to  the  coal 
and  blanket  funds,  than  from  any  deep-seated  af- 

^  Dr.  Robertson  Nicoll  in  his  Introduction  to  Jane  Eyre. 


1 62  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

fection;  but  there  Is  no  real  resemblance  between 
Rivers  and  Mr.  Nussey.  I  have  had  the  advan- 
tage of  reading  a  volume  of  Mr.  Nussey's  Diary 
and  Sermons}  Mr.  Nussey  has  one  point  at  least 
In  common  with  Rivers,  In  that  during  his  days  at 
Cambridge  he  more  than  once  records  In  his  diary 
that  he  has  heard  Mr.  Simeon  preach;  and  Simeon 
was  the  great  Evangelical  light  of  that  epoch. 
Mr.  Nussey  certainly  did  not  lack  for  rigour,  for 
even  when  an  undergraduate  he  recalls  with  satis- 
faction, "  This  evening  at  a  full  meeting  Mr. 
Heald  exhorted  from  2  Corinthians  vl.  14,  on  the 
action  of  a  member  having  married  a  worldly- 
minded  man  ";  on  another  occasion,  that  "  Stayed 
to  supper;  never  asked  to  take  family  prayers  nor 
to  say  grace.  Much  hurt  that  they  did  not  see 
the  propriety  and  feel  the  necessity  of  this  line  of 
conduct  " ;  and  once  more,  Mr.  Nussey  writes  in 
his  diary:  "  Friday,  11  June,  1839.  Obtained  an 
advance  of  £1  from  Mr.  Wakeford,  a  farmer  and 

^  This  volume  is  in  MSS.,  and  is  in  the  possession  of  Mr. 
J.  J.  Stead,  of  Heckmondwike,  York,  to  whose  courtesy  I  am 
indebted  for  its  perusal. 


JANE    EYRE  163 

coal-merchant  In  Earnley,  with  whom  I  spent  the 
evening  at  his  house.  He  unfortunately  became 
offended  at  something  Mr.  Browne  once  uttered 
In  the  pulpit,  and  thereupon  left  the  Church  and 
joined  the  Dissenters  at  Chichester,  where  he  still 
continues.  There  seem  some  good  traits  In  the 
man,  and  I  think  he  errs  through  Ignorance  rather 
than  wilfulness.  May  he  be  brought  back  again, 
wandering  sheep !  "  Side  by  side  with  such  quota- 
tions as  these  we  have  Mr.  Nussey's  matter-of-fact 
attempts  to  get  a  wife.  He  first  asked  the 
daughter  of  his  former  vicar,  Lutwigge,  whom  he 
characterizes  as  "a  steady,  intelligent,  sensible 
and,  I  trust,  good  girl,  named  Mary  " ;  she  refused 
him,  and  we  have  the  following  lines  in  his  diary : 
*'  On  Tuesday  last  received  a  decisive  reply  from 
M.  A.  L.'s  papa;  a  loss,  but  I  trust  a  providential 
one.  Believe  not  her  will,  but  her  father's.  All 
right,  but  God  knows  best  what  is  good  for  us, 
for  His  church,  and  for  His  own  glory.  Write  to 
a  Yorkshire  friend,  C.  B."  A  little  later  on, 
March  8,  1839,  we  find  the  record — *'  Received 
an  unfavourable  reply  from  '  C.  B.'    The  will  of 


i64  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

the  Lord  be  done."  "  C.  B.,"  of  course,  is  Char- 
lotte Bronte,  and  some  might  find  satisfaction  in 
the  fact  that  the  marriage  which  this  matter-of- 
fact  individual  attained  to  a  very  few  months  later 
should  have  turned  out  unhappily.  In  Mr. 
Nussey,  however,  we  have  not  in  the  least  Char- 
lotte Bronte's  creation,  St.  John  Rivers.  There 
are  a  few  references  to  missionary  work  in  Mr. 
Nussey's  diary,  but  on  the  whole  it  is  the  diary 
of  a  dull,  uninspired  person,  with  not  sufficient 
brains  to  be  a  high-souled  fanatic;  and  it  is  a 
high-souled  fanatic  that  Miss  Bronte  depicts  in  her 
book.  That  is  why  I  am  inclined  to  think  that 
the  real  prototype  of  Rivers  existed  for  her  not 
in  life  but  in  literature;  that  she  had  read  from 
the  Keighley  Library  Sargent's  Memoir  of  Henry 
MartyUy  that  devoted  missionary  from  Cornwall, 
of  whom  her  aunt  must  have  constantly  spoken  to 
her,  and  her  father  also,  for  he  was  practically 
contemporaneous  with  him  at  St.  John's  College, 
Cambridge,  a  fact  which  probably  led  her  to  give 
Rivers  his  Christian  name  of  St.  John.  It  was 
Charles    Simeon    again,    her    father's    favourite 


JANE    EYRE  165 

preacher,  who  led  Martyn  to  become  a  missionary. 
Martyn,  it  will  be  remembered,  translated  the  New 
Testament  Into  Hindustani.  There  are  points  also 
In  the  relations  with  Miss  Lydia  Grenfell,  whom  he 
had  hoped  to  take  back  with  him  to  India  when 
he  died  of  the  plague,  that  unquestionably  recall 
St.  John  Rivers.  Martyn  has  been  described  by 
Sir  James  Stephen  as  "  the  one  heroic  name  which 
adorns  the  Church  of  England  from  the  days  of 
Queen  Elizabeth  to  our  own."  ^ 

****** 
We  may  readily  thrust  aside,  however,  all  these 
inquiries  as  to  ''  keys  "  to  Jane  Eyre^  and  go  to 
the  real  heart  of  the  book,  which  is  quite  Indepen- 
dent of  plot  and  of  prototype.  It  is  in  reality  as 
original  a  novel  as  was  ever  submitted  to  the 
judgment  of  the  reading  public.  Here  Indeed  was 
a  work  of  extraordinary  power.  In  the  first  place, 
the  writer  had  a  style,  a  vigorous,  forcible  style; 
a  style  full  of  picturesque  phraseology,  character- 
ized by  that  intense  sincerity  which  is  ever  one  of 

^  Curiously  enough,  Henry  Martyn  has  been  made  the  hero 
of  a  novel  called  Her  Title  of  Honour y  published  in  1871  by 
Holm  Lee. 


i66  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

the  greatest  things  In  literature.  No  other  poet 
has  better  described  the  impressions  made  upon 
his  mind  by  the  sky,  the  air,  the  sea.  "  Mistress 
of  some  of  the  most  great  and  simple  prose  of  all 
this  century  "  is  the  criticism  of  a  distinguished 
woman  critic  of  our  day  upon  the  work.^  One 
might  make  an  anthology  of  the  fine  passages 
from  her  four  books,  as  for  example : — 

"  I  looked  at  my  love;  it  shivered  in  my  heart 
like  a  suffering  child  in  a  cold  cradle.'' 

:):  4:  :f:  H:  ^  * 

"  To  see  what  a  heavy  lid  day  slowly  lifted, 
what  a  wan  glance  she  flung  upon  the  hills,  you 
would  have  thought  the  sun's  fire  quenched  In  last 
night's  floods." 

''  Not  till  the  destroying  angel  of  tempest  had 
achieved  his  perfect  work  would  he  fold  the  wings 
whose  waft  was   thunder,   the  tremor  of  whose 

plumes  was  storm." 

****** 
"  The  night  is  not  calm;  the  equinox  still  strug- 
gles in  Its  storms.     The  wild  rains  of  the  day  are 

1  Alice  Meynell,  in  the  Pall  Mall  Magazine,  May  24,  1899. 


JANE    EYRE  167 

abated;  the  great  single  cloud  disparts,  and  rolls 
away  from  Heaven,  not  passing  and  leaving  a  sea 
of  sapphire,  but  tossing  buoyant  before  a  con- 
tinued, long-sounding,  hIgh-rushIng  moonlight 
tempest.  .  .  .  No  Endymlon  will  watch  for  his 
goddess  to-night :  there  are  no  flocks  on  the  moun- 


But  style  alone  does  not  add  to  the  permanent 
forces  of  literature.  It  Is  but  that  quality  added 
to  the  passionate  sincerity  of  the  writer  that  will 
make  each  succeeding  generation  read  Jane  Eyre^ 
for  here  we  have  a  book  In  which  are  crowded  all 
the  deepest  experiences  of  the  human  soul,  a  frank 
courageous  attitude  upon  life,  and  death,  and 
duty.  Charlotte  Bronte  had  read  multitudes  of 
books,  and  she  had  been  an  observer  of  the  hu- 
manity around  her,  In  that  little  world  of  rough, 
rude  men  and  commonplace  women.  To  her  had 
come  dreams  of  a  wider,  freer  life,  of  profound 
love,  of  heroic  sacrifice.  She  had  thought  out  all 
the  possibilities  of  a  great  passion  in  which  love 


1 68  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

was  king.  In  her  own  life  she  was  the  most  self- 
suppressed  of  human  beings.  She  saw  her  debased 
brother  and  her  much-loved  sisters  taken  from  her 
and  buried  within  a  stone's  throw  of  the  house  which 
was  her  home.  Yet  she  clung  to  that  home,  and  to 
the  father  who  had  so  peremptorily  attempted  to 
prevent  her  marriage:  finally  she  married  to  re- 
tain to  her  father  the  occupancy  of  the  melancholy 
house  which  she  might  reasonably  have  hated  and 
desired  to  quit  for  ever.  A  dull,  prosaic  life  she 
had  mapped  out  for  herself  at  the  call  of  duty; 
but  meanwhile  her  imagination  ran  riot,  and  love, 
passionate  love,  a  reckless  throwing  off  of  con- 
ventions, was  a  part  of  her  dreams,  the  imparting 
of  which  was  to  throw  English  society  into  a  fever 
of  interest.  After  the  current  novels  of  her  day, 
Jane  Eyre  was  a  model  of  outspokenness,  a  veri- 
table volcano.  No  wonder  Miss  Rigby  said  hard 
things  about  it,  things  which  caused  critics  who 
wrote  a  generation  later  to  be  indignant.  But 
really  the  little  Jane  was  upsetting  the  conventional 
standards  of  her  day,  by  sitting  on  Rochester's 
knees.     What  would  another  Jane  who  wrote  a 


JANE    EYRE  169 

generation  earlier  have  said?  The  fair  Elizabeth 
Bennet  of  Miss  Austen's  imagination  could  never 
have  caught  the  wealthy  Mr.  Darcy  by  such 
means.  But  Charlotte  Bronte  had  been  fed  on 
strong  literary  food.  She  had  been  allowed  to 
*'  browse  "  in  a  library  pretty  indiscriminately,  a 
thing  which  did  not  often  happen  to  young  girls 
in  the  first  half  of  last  century.  The  books  that 
she  obtained  from  Keighley  must  have  included 
the  works  of  such  essentially  frank  writers  as 
Swift  and  Defoe.  Then,  again,  in  her  own  home 
there  was  doubtless  not  too  much  discrimination 
so  far  as  the  men  were  concerned  as  to  the  border- 
line. Her  father  was,  after  all,  a  peasant,  and  in 
the  habit  of  calling  a  spade  a  spade.  If  we  may 
judge  from  some  of  the  letters  unpublished  and 
unpublishable  of  the  brother,  Branwell  Bronte,  we 
see  also  that  his  mind  was  of  essentially  coarse 
fibre.  Altogether,  it  is  not  in  the  least  difficult 
to  comprehend  that  Miss  Bronte  was  able  to  take 
the  attitude  she  did,  and  to  write  with  a  frankness 
which  was  somewhat  new  in  her  day  and  gen- 
eration.   As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  criticism  of  the 


lyo  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

Quarterly  ^  was  most  to  be  regretted,  In  that  it 
frightened  her,  and  tended  to  make  her  conven- 
tional. The  bad  Influences  of  this  criticism  Is 
traceable  In  Shirley^  which  would  otherwise  prob- 
ably have  been  a  very  much  greater  book  than  It 
actually  Is. 

1  The  article  is  called  Vanity  Fair,  Jane  Eyre,  and  Govern^ 
esses,  and  appeared  in  the  Quarterly  for  December,  1848. 


CHAPTER   XIV 

SHIRLEY 

In  taking  up  a  copy  of  Charlotte  Bronte's 
Shirley  we  find  ourselves  in  an  atmosphere  more 
easy  of  interpretation  than  that  of  any  other  book 
written  by  the  three  sisters.  Birstall  in  Yorkshire, 
near  Batley,  is  the  real  centre  of  the  story;  not 
very  far  away  you  may  come  to  Oakwell  Hall, 
the  "  Fieldhead  "  where  Shirley  lived,  and  within 
easy  reach  also  the  Red  House  at  Gomersall, 
known  in  the  book  as  "  Briarmains,"  where  the 
family  of  Yorke  lived.  The  school  teacher,  Miss 
Wooler,  as  Mrs.  Gaskell  tells  us  in  detail,  was  in 
the  habit  of  relating  her  memories  of  the  great  mill 
riots  at  the  beginning  of  the  century.  The  attack 
on  Hollow's  Mill  in  the  book  is  but  a  picturesque 
record  of  an  actual  event  in  April,  1812,^  when  an 

^  Her  original  idea  was  to  call  her  story  Hollow's  Mill  and 
not  Shirley. 

171 


172  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

assault  by  some  hundreds  of  starving  cloth- 
dressers,  armed  with  pistols,  hatchets  and  blud- 
geons, was  made  upon  the  factory  of  Mr.  Cart- 
wright  at  Rawfolds,  between  Huddersfield  and 
Leeds.  Mr.  Cartwright,  like  Mr.  Moore,  had 
foreign  blood  in  his  veins,  dark  eyes  and  com- 
plexion; and  Mr.  Cartwright's  successful  defence 
of  his  mill  was  but  retold  in  picturesque  form  in 
Shirley.  Then  in  Mr.  Helstone  we  have  the  pro- 
totype of  a  Mr.  Hammond  Roberson  of  Heald's 
Hall,  who  built  a  handsome  church  at  Liversedge 
— a  fine  old  Tory  who  was  intimate  with  Cart- 
wright,  and  armed  himself  and  his  household  in 
his  defence.  It  is  he  of  whom  it  is  told  in  Shirley 
that  he  put  the  sweetheart  of  one  of  his  servants 
under  the  pump ;  "  Fanny ''  is  the  servant  in 
Shirley;  it  is  "  Betty  "  in  Mrs.  Gaskell's  relation 
of  the  actual  circumstance.  Almost  every  inci- 
dent in  the  book,  as  for  example  the  meeting  of 
the  rival  Dissenting  and  Church  of  England 
schools  in  a  narrow  lane,  has  its  counterpart  in  the 
tradition  or  the  actual  experiences  of  Charlotte 
Bronte's  life  in  her  Yorkshire  home. 


SHIRLEY  173 

Equally  plain  is  the  presentation  of  the  vari- 
ous characters,  not  only  of  Matthew  Helstone  as 
we  have  seen,  and  Mr.  Cartwright,  but  far  more 
sharply  defined  are  the  three  curates  and  the  Yorke 
family.  Mr.  Donne,  the  curate  of  Whinbury,  for 
example,  has  been  easily  identified  as  Mr.  Grant 
of  Oxenhope;  Mr.  Malone,  the  curate  of  Briar- 
field,  as  Mr.  Smith  of  Haworth;  while  Mr.  Sweet- 
ing, the  curate  of  Nunnerley,  was  Mr.  Bradley  of 
Oakworth — the  only  one  of  the  three  who  is  still 
living.^      The  interesting  Mr.  Yorke  who   lived 

^  "The  very  curates,  poor  fellows!  show  no  resentment," 
says  Miss  Bronte  in  one  of  her  letters,  "each  characteristically 
finds  solace  for  his  own  wounds  in  crowing  over  his  brethren. 
Mr.  Donne  was,  at  first,  a  little  disturbed;  for  a  week  or  two 
he  was  in  disquietude,  but  he  is  now  soothed  down;  only  yes- 
terday I  had  the  pleasure  of  making  him  a  comfortable  cup  of 
tea,  and  seeing  him  sip  it  with  revived  complacency.  It  is  a 
curious  fact  that  since  he  read  Shirley^  he  has  come  to  the  house 
oftener  than  ever,  and  been  remarkably  meek  and  assiduous  to 
please.  Some  people's  natures  are  veritable  enigmas;  I  quite 
expected  to  have  had  one  good  scene  at  least  with  him;  but 
as  yet  nothingof  the  sort  has  occurred." 

Mr.  Donne  or  Joseph  Brett  Grant  was  the  master  of  the 
Grammar  School  at  the  time.  He  became  curate  and  after- 
wards vicar  of  Oxenhope,  where  he  died  immensely  esteemed 
a  quarter  of  a  century  later.  Peter  Augustus  Malone,  who 
was  James  William  Smith  in  real  life,  was  for  two  years  curate 


174  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

at  Briarmalns  was  Mr.  Joshua  Taylor,  and  his 
daughters  Mary  Taylor  and  Martha  Taylor,  are 
presented  respectively  as  Rose  and  Jessie  Yorke. 
Mrs.  Pryor  is  Miss  Margaret  Wooler.  As 
for  the  heroine,  Shirley,   Mrs.  Gaskell  recalls  a 

to  Mr.  Bronte  at  Haworth.  He  had  graduated  at  Trinity  Col- 
lege, Dublin,  and  after  a  two  years'  curacy  at  Haworth  he  be- 
came curate  of  the  neighbouring  parish  of  Keighley.  In  1847, 
his  family  having  suffered  frightfully  from  the  Irish  famine,  he 
determined  to  try  and  build  up  a  home  for  them  in  America,  and 
sailed  for  Canada.  The  last  that  was  heard  of  him  was  from 
Minnesota,  where  he  was  cutting  down  trees  for  lumbermen;  and 
he  probably  perished  on  his  way  to  the  goldfields  of  California.* 
David  Sweeting,  the  third  curate,  was  the  Rev.  James  Ches- 
terton Bradley  (who  had  been  educated  at  Queen's  College, 
Oxford),  from  the  neighbouring  parish  of  Oakworth,  to  which 
he  had  been  curate  since  1845.  He  went  in  1847  to  All  Saints', 
Paddington;  in  1856  he  went  to  Corfe  Castle,  Dorset,  and  in  1863 
he  became  rector  of  Sutton-under-Brayles,  Warwickshire,  a 
living  which  he  held  until  1904  when  he  retired;  and  is  still  living 
at  an  advanced  age  at  Richmond,  Surrey.  Mr.  Bradley  has  al- 
ways found  great  pleasure  in  recalling  the  fact  that  he  was  the 
prototype  of  Mr.  Sweeting  in  Shirley^  although  he  declares  that 
the  meetings  of  the  curates  at  each  other's  lodgings  were  exclu- 
sively for  a  series  of  two-hours  readings  of  the  Greek  fathers, 
and  not  for  the  drunken  orgies  described  in  Shirley. 

*  See  A  Well  Known  Character  in  Fiction^  the  true  story  of 
Mr.  Peter  Malone  in  Shirley,  by  his  nephew,  Robert  Keating 
Smith,  in  The  Tatler,  April  2,  1 902. 


SHIRLEY  175 

conversation  with  Charlotte  In  which  she  stated 
that  the  character  was  meant  for  her  sister  Emlly.^ 
She  said  that  the  presentation  of  Shirley  was  an 
attempt  to  draw  Emily,  as  she  would  have  been  if 
placed  In  circumstances  of  health  and  prosperity. 
As  to  Caroline  Helstone,  there  Is  some  discrepancy 
as  to  the  prototype.  Miss  Ellen  Nussey  believed 
herself  to  have  been  Intended  for  Caroline  Hel- 
stone, while  on  the  other  hand  Miss  Bronte's  hus- 
band declared  that  his  wife  had  distinctly  denied 
this  to  him.  Miss  Bronte  in  one  of  her  letters, 
says : — 

''  I  regret  exceedingly  that  it  is  not  in  my  power 
to  give  any  assurance  of  the  substantial  existence 
of  Miss  Helstone.  You  must  be  satisfied  If  that 
young  lady  has  furnished  your  mind  with  a  pleas- 
ant idea;  she  is  a  native  of  Dreamland." 

We  may  fairly  assume  that  there  was  some- 
thing of  Ellen  Nussey,  something  of  Anne  Bronte, 
a  fragment  of  herself,  and  something  also  of 
dreamland  in  "  Caroline."  "  You  are  not  to  sup- 
pose any  of  the  characters  in  Shirley  intended  as 
^  Li  fey  Haworth  Edition,  page  30. 


176  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

literal  portraits,"  she  writes  to  a  friend.  "  It 
would  not  suit  the  rules  of  art,  nor  of  my  own 
feelings,  to  write  in  that  style.  We  only  suffer 
reality  to  suggest^  never  to  dictate.  The  heroines 
are  abstractions,  and  the  heroes  also.  Qualities  I 
have  seen,  loved  and  admired  are  here  and  there 
put  In  as  decorative  gems,  to  be  preserved  in  that 
setting  .  .  .  since  you  say  you  could  recognize  the 
originals  of  all  except  the  heroines,  pray  whom 
did  you  suppose  the  two  Moores  to  represent?  " 

It  is  not  easy  to  give  an  answer  to  that  question 
as  regards  Robert  Moore,  although  Mrs.  Gaskell 
remarks  that  from  the  sons  of  the  Taylor  family 
she  drew  "  all  that  there  was  of  truth  in  the  char- 
acter of  the  heroes  of  her  first  two  works."  ^ 
Robert  Gerard  Moore  is  obviously  a  very  compos- 
ite character,  but  his  brother  Louis  has  clearly  most 
of  the  characteristics  of  Monsieur  Heger,  who  in- 
deed appears  In  each  novel  in  succession.  He  is 
Professor  Crimsworth,  Fairfax  Rochester,  Louis 
Moore,  and  Paul  Emanuel,  under  different  con- 
ditions. The  critics  who  have  made  much  of  the 
^  Mrs.  Gaskell's  Life^  page  232,  Haworth  Edition. 


SHIRLEY  177 

enthusiasm  with  which  Charlotte  Bronte  regarded 
her  Brussels  master  and  friend,  might  well  take 
note  that  in  Shirley  she  not  only  attempted  to  de- 
pict what  her  sister  Emily  would  have  been  had 
fortune  endowed  her  with  a  good  estate,  but  also 
permitted  her  fancy  to  conceive  what  could  have 
taken  place  had  M.  Constantin  Heger  chanced  to 
have  been  a  tutor  exiled  from  Belgium  and  placed 
by  accident  in  the  comfortable  home  of  his  re- 
markable pupil.  M.  Heger,  we  are  told,  admired 
Emily  Bronte  very  much  more  than  he  did  her 
sister,  and  rated  her  genius  higher.  The  sugges- 
tion of  the  existence  of  a  wild  and  undisciplined 
passion  for  M.  Heger,  which  has  been  more  than 
once  hinted  at,  might  be  rejected  by  any  thought- 
ful reader  of  Shirley,  recognizing  as  he  will  that 
Monsieur  Heger  and  his  counterpart  Louis  Moore 
have  as  many  points  in  common  as  have  Emily 
Bronte  and  Shirley. 

Mrs.  Humphry  Ward  has  demurred  to  Moore 
as  a  poor  effort  of  creation,  and  quotes  Miss 
Bronte's  own  confession: — "When  I  write  about 
women  I  am  sure  of  my  ground — in  the  other 


178  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

case,  I  am  not  so  sure."  Mr.  Swinburne  is  equally 
contemptuous.  Nevertheless  the  book  only  attains 
to  real  distinction  when  Louis  Moore  appears  on 
the  scene.  The  earlier  half  of  it  is  too  didactic, 
too  much  concerned  with  the  author's  crude 
theories  of  social  life,  and  not  very  profound  con- 
ceptions of  the  social  problem,  of  the  relation  of 
capital  to  labour.  Not  until  she  resumes  the  story 
after  the  death  of  her  two  sisters,  not  In  fact  until 
we  reach  the  chapter  entitled  "  The  Valley  of  the 
Shadow  of  Death,"  do  we  find  the  writer  on  firm 
ground.  It  Is  well  to  get  away  from  the  somewhat 
cheap  satire  on  the  curates,  from  the  tiresome  and 
insipid  Caroline,  to  the  various  episodes  of  Shir- 
ley's quaint  courtship — the  interesting  facing  of 
the  problem  of  a  man's  attitude  to  the  woman  he 
loves  when  she  has  means  and  he  has  none. 

Shirley  was  written  under  painful  circumstances. 
The  first  and  second  volumes  were  finished  while 
her  brother  and  two  sisters  were  living,  the  third 
was  begun  and  the  book  completed  after  all  three 
were  gone  from  her.  The  earlier  volumes,  writ- 
ten in  the  turmoil  of  hope  deferred,  of  melancholy 


SHIRLEY  179 

anticipation  of  the  inevitable,  show  a  great  falling 
off  from  the  power  of  Jane  Eyre;  but  the  last 
volume,  written  in  the  unutterable  loneliness  of 
bereavement,  is  quite  masterly.  "  The  two  human 
beings  who  understood  me,  and  whom  I  under- 
stood, are  gone,"  she  writes.  Yet  with  the  quiet 
fortitude  that  was  ever  her  characteristic,  she 
brought  her  task  to  a  conclusion.  The  publishers 
in  Cornhill  were  entirely  satisfied,  and  the  book 
was  published  in  October,  1849.  Again,  as  with 
Jane  Eyre,  the  criticism  that  she  most  appreciated 
came  from  Eugene  Forcade  in  the  Revue  des  Deux 
Mondes.  "  With  that  man,"  she  writes,  "  I 
would  shake  hands  if  I  saw  him.  I  would  say, 
*  You  know  me.  Monsieur;  I  shall  deem  it  an 
honour  to  know  you.'  I  could  not  say  so  much 
of  the  mass  of  the  London  critics."  At  the  end 
of  November  she  paid  her  fourth  visit  to  London 
— the  first  that  had  in  it  anything  of  a  social  char- 
acter. She  was  the  guest  of  her  publisher,  Mr. 
George  Smith,  then  a  young  bachelor  living  with 
his  mother  at  Westbourne  Place,  Bishop's  Road. 
Before  leaving  Haworth  she  had  had  a  copy  of 


i8o  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

her  book  sent  to  Harriet  Martineau  with  the  fol- 
lowing note  enclosed: — 

"  Currer  Bell  offers  a  copy  of  Shirley  to  Miss 
Martineau's  acceptance,  in  acknowledgment  of 
the  pleasure  and  profit  (sic)  he  had  derived  from 
her  works.  When  C.  B.  first  read  Deerhrook  he 
tasted  a  new  and  keen  pleasure,  and  experienced 
a  genuine  benefit.  In  his  mind  Deerhrook  ranks 
with  the  writings  that  have  really  done  him  good, 
added  to  his  stock  of  ideas  and  rectified  his  views 
of  hfe."  1 

Miss  Martineau  replied,  addressing  her  letter 
to  "  Currer  Bell,  Esq.,"  but  beginning  it  "  Dear 
Madam."  On  December  8  she  received  a  letter 
signed  "  Currer  Bell,"  saying  that  the  writer  was 
in  town  and  desired  to  see  her.  Miss  Martineau 
has  left  an  amusing  account  of  the  interview,  the 
arrival  of  a  male  visitor  six  feet  high,  whom  some 
of  her  friends  believed  to  be  the  new  author,  and 
finally  the  appearance  of  "  Miss  Bronte,"  whom 
the  footman  announced  as  "  Miss  Brogden."  "  I 
thought  her  the  smallest  creature  I  had  ever  seen, 
^  Harriet  Martineau's  Autobiography,  vol.  2. 


SHIRLEY  i8i 

except  at  a  fair,"  was  Miss  Martineau's  first  im- 
pression. Miss  Bronte  saw  others  of  her  literary 
idols,  Thackeray  in  particular,  to  whom  the  second 
edition  of  Jane  Eyre  was  dedicated,  and  with 
whom  as  "  A  Titan  of  mind  " — she  felt  "  fear- 
fully stupid."  In  John  Forster,  afterwards  to  be- 
come known  to  all  as  the  biographer  of  Dickens, 
she  discovered  a  *'  loud  swagger."  The  best  ac- 
count of  the  visit  is  contained  In  a  letter  to  her 
friend.  Miss  Wooler  ^  : — 

"  Ellen  Nussey,  it  seems,  told  you  I  spent  a  fort- 
night In  London  last  September;  they  wished  me 
very  much  to  stay  a  month,  alleging  that  I  should 
in  that  time  be  able  to  secure  a  complete  circle 
of  acquaintance,  but  I  found  a  fortnight  of  such 
excitement  quite  enough.  The  whole  day  was 
usually  spent  in  sightseeing,  and  often  the  evening 
was  spent  in  society ;  it  was  more  than  I  could  bear 
for  a  length  of  time.  On  one  occasion  I  met  a 
party  of  my  critics — seven  of  them ;  some  of  them 
had  been  very  bitter  foes  in  print,  but  they  were 

1  From  Charlotte  Bronte  and  Her  Circley  where  the  letter  is 
wrongly  dated. 


182  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

prodigiously  civil  face  to  face.  These  gentlemen 
seemed  infinitely  grander,  more  pompous,  dashing, 
showy,  than  the  few  authors  I  saw.  Mr.  Thack- 
eray, for  instance,  is  a  man  of  quiet  simple  de- 
meanour; he  is  however  looked  upon  with  some 
awe  and  even  distrust.  His  conversation  is  very 
peculiar,  too  perverse  to  be  pleasant.  It  was  pro- 
posed to  me  to  see  Charles  Dickens,  Lady  Mor- 
gan, Mesdames  Trollope,  Gore,  and  some  others, 
but  I  was  aware  these  introductions  would  bring 
a  degree  of  notoriety  I  was  not  disposed  to  en- 
counter; I  declined,  therefore,  with  thanks.'* 

Taking  up  the  thread  of  her  life  once  more  at 
Haworth,  Charlotte  Bronte  found  the  situation 
well  nigh  intolerable.  Something  of  the  mental 
anguish  that  she  presents  so  powerfully  as  an  epi- 
sode in  the  life  of  Lucy  Snowe  in  Villette  would 
seem  to  have  visited  her  at  this  time,  and  she  was 
not  without  her  tribulations  arising  out  of  the  at- 
titude of  friends  who  had  taken  their  cue  from  the 
Quarterly  Review  article,  or  similar  pronounce- 
ments. There  was  her  own  kindly  but  strait-laced 
governess,  for  example : 


SHIRLEY  183 

"  I  had  a  rather  foolish  letter  from  Miss 
Wooler  the  other  day.  Some  things  in  It  nettled 
me,  especially  an  unnecessary,  earnest  assurance 
that,  In  spite  of  all  I  had  done  in  the  writing  line, 
I  still  retained  a  place  in  her  esteem.  My  answer 
took  strong  and  high  ground  at  once.  I  said  I 
had  been  troubled  by  no  doubts  on  the  subject; 
that  I  neither  did  her  nor  myself  the  injustice  to 
suppose  there  was  anything  in  what  I  had  written 
to  incur  the  just  forfeiture  of  esteem.  I  was 
aware,  I  intimated,  that  some  persons  thought 
proper  to  take  exceptions  at  Jane  Eyre^  and  that 
for  their  own  sakes  I  was  sorry,  as  I  invariably 
found  them  individuals  in  whom  the  animal  largely 
predominated  over  the  intellectual,  persons  by 
nature  coarse,  by  inclination  sensual,  whatever 
they  might  be  by  education  and  principle." 

The  reviews  of  Shirley  moreover  were  not  all 
enthusiastic.  Mr.  George  Henry  Lewes,  had  a 
not  too  favourable  word  to  say  in  the  Edinburgh 
Review,  which  hurt  her,  and  The  Times  review 
she  described  as  "  acrimonious."  In  a  letter  to 
Lewes  she  demanded  to  be  judged  as  an  author, 


1 84  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

not  as  a  woman.  However  she  was  able  about 
this  time  to  escape  from  Haworth  and  to  be  the 
guest  of  Sir  James  Kay-Shuttleworth  at  Gaw- 
thorpe  Hall,  Lancashire.  In  June  of  this  year 
(1850)  she  was  again  in  London,  and  saw  the 
Duke  of  Wellington,  the  hero  of  her  girlhood, 
"  a  real  grand  old  man,"  received  a  morning  call 
from  Thackeray — ''  I  was  moved  to  speak  to  him 
of  some  of  his  shortcomings,"  and  had  an  inter- 
view with  Lewes,  whose  face  reminded  her  of  her 
sister  Emily's  and  *'  almost  moved  me  to  tears." 
This  holiday  began  at  the  Smiths',  and  concluded 
at  the  Wheelwrights',  her  Brussels  friends. 

Writing  to  a  friend  from  Mrs.  Smith's  new 
house  at  Gloucester  Terrace,  Hyde  Park,  she 
says : — 

"  Here  I  feel  very  comfortable.  Mrs.  Smith 
treats  me  with  a  serene,  equable  kindness  which 
just  suits  me.  Her  son  is,  as  before,  genial  and 
kindly.  I  have  seen  very  few  persons,  and  am 
not  likely  to  see  many,  as  the  agreement  was  that 
I  was  to  be  very  quiet.  We  have  been  to  the  Ex- 
hibition of  the  Royal  Academy,  to  the  Opera,  and 


SHIRLEY  185 

the  Zoological  Gardens.  The  weather  Is  splendid. 
I  shall  not  stay  longer  than  a  fortnight  In  London. 
The  feverlshness  and  exhaustion  beset  me  some- 
what, but  not  quite  so  badly  as  before." 

During  this  stay  In  London  she  sat  to  George 
Richmond  for  the  only  portrait  of  her  that  has 
any  real  value  or  authenticity — a  crayon  drawing 
presented  by  Mr.  George  Smith  to  her  father,  and 
pronounced  by  Mr.  Bronte  to  be  "  a  correct  like- 
ness "  and  *'  a  graphic  representation."  * 

Then  followed  a  short  trip  to  Scotland,  Mr. 
George  Smith  and  his  sister  being  of  the  party. 
A  few  weeks  at  Brookroyd  with  her  friend  Miss 
Nussey  and  at  Haworth,  and  she  was  again  on 
her  travels,  this  time  to  be  the  guest  of  Sir  James 
Kay-Shuttleworth  at  his  house,  "  The  Briery," 
near  Bowness.  Here  she  met  Mrs.  Gaskell,  thus 
forming  one  of  the  most  momentous  friendships 
in  her  destiny.     *'  I  was  truly  glad  of  her  com- 

^  This  portrait,  which  has  been  many  times  reproduced, 
occupied  the  position  of  honour  in  the  parlour  at  Haworth  until 
Mr.  Bronte's  death.  It  is  now  hanging  in  the  drawing-room  of 
Mr.  NichoUs  in  his  house  in  Ireland.  He  has  kindly  destined 
it  for  the  National  Portrait  Gallery  of  London. 


1 86  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

panlonshlp.  She  is  a  woman  of  most  genuine 
talent,  of  cheerful,  pleasing  and  cordial  manners, 
and  I  believe  of  a  kind  and  good  heart."  ^ 

Miss  Martineau  was  away  at  the  time,  but  Miss 
Bronte  promised  her  a  visit  which  was  paid  in 
December  of  this  same  year,  1850.  She  was  glad 
to  escape  from  her  own  morbid  moods,  and  was 
quite  unable,  as  she  says,  "  to  bear  the  canker  of 
constant  solitude."  In  the  interval,  however,  at 
Haworth,  she  busied  herself  by  editing  her  sister*s 
Remains.  The  task  laid  a  great  strain  upon  her, 
"  The  reading  over  of  papers,  the  renewal  of  re- 
membrances, brought  back  the  pang  of  bereave- 

^  To  Mrs.  Gaskell  she  wrote  upon  her  return  to  Haworth 
a  letter  containing  an  interesting  critique — Mr.  Swinburne  calls 
it  "inept" — upon  Tennyson's  newly-published  poem: — 

"  I  have  read  Tennyson's  In  Memoriamy  or  rather  part  of  it; 
I  closed  the  book  when  I  got  about  half-way.  It  is  beautiful; 
it  is  mournful;  it  is  monotonous.  Many  of  the  feelings  ex- 
pressed bear,  in  their  utterance,  the  stamp  of  truth;  yes,  if 
Arthur  Hallam  had  been  something  nearer  Alfred  Tennyson, 
his  brother  instead  of  his  friend,  I  should  have  distrusted 
this  rhymed,  and  measured,  and  printed  monument  of  grief. 
What  change  the  lapse  of  years  may  work,  I  do  not  know; 
but  it  seems  to  me  that  bitter  sorrow,  while  recent,  does  not 
glow  in  verse." 


SHIRLEY  187 

ment,  and  occasioned  a  depression  of  spirits  well- 
nigh  intolerable."  The  "  Introduction  "  that  she 
wrote  to  the  second  edition  of  Wuthering  Heights 
is  one  of  the  most  striking  of  her  literary  achieve- 
ments. This  book  was  published  on  December  10, 
1850,  and  a  week  later  she  was  with  Miss  Mar- 
tineau  at  Ambleside.  "  She  is  both  hard  and 
warm-hearted,  abrupt  and  affectionate,  liberal  and 
despotic " — such  was  Miss  Bronte's  sufficient 
estimate  of  her  hostess.  At  Ambleside  she  met 
Matthew  Arnold,  "  whose  manner  displeases  from 
its  seeming  foppery,"  and  whose  theological  opin- 
ions were,  she  regretted,  "  very  vague  and  unset- 
tled." Miss  Bronte  did  not  live  to  read  Literature 
and  Dogma  and  God  and  the  Bible,  nor  could  she 
have  anticipated  that  the  finest  recognition  of  her 
and  her  sisters  that  poetry  had  to  offer  would 
come  from  the  foppish  youth  she  then  met  for  the 
first  and  only  time.  However  she  tells  her  friend 
Miss  Wooler,  who  had  an  interest  in  Dr.  Arnold, 
that  during  this  visit  she  had  seen  much  of  the 
Arnold  family,  "  and  daily  admired  In  the  widow 
and  children  of  one  of  the  greatest  and  best  men 


i88  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

of  his  time,  the  possession  of  qualities  the  most 
estimable  and  enduring." 

At  the  end  of  May,  185 1,  Miss  Bronte  is  again 
in  London — the  time  for  her  longest  and  most  en- 
joyable visit — tempted  thither  by  Mrs.  Smith 
on  account  of  the  Great  Exhibition  in  Hyde  Park 
— the  Crystal  Palace,  as  it  was  called.  She  much 
enjoyed  listening  to  one  of  Thackeray's  lectures 
in  Willis's  Rooms.  Here  she  was  introduced  to 
Lord  Houghton  and  other  notable  contemporaries, 
and  after  the  lecture  she  was  mobbed  by  a  crowd 
of  admirers  as  she  passed  trembling  and  agitated 
to  the  doors.  The  Exhibition  proved  a  "  marvel- 
lous, stirring  and  bewildering  sight,  but  it  is  not 
much  in  my  way."  She  enjoyed  more  her  later 
visits,  particularly  one  with  Sir  David  Brewster, 
but  she  was  most  at  home  in  hearing  D'Aubigne 
preach;  "  it  was  pleasant,  half  sweet,  half  sad,  to 
hear  the  French  language  once  more."  How 
much  Rachel,  the  great  French  actress — then  in 
London — thrilled  her  every  reader  of  Villette  will 
recall — "  she  is  not  a  woman,  she  is  a  snake." 
Then  she  was  present  at  one  of  Samuel  Rogers's 


SHIRLEY  189 

famous  breakfasts,  which  in  writing  to  her  father, 
who  loved  to  hear  of  her  recognition,  she  tactfully 
says  are  "  celebrated  throughout  Europe  for  their 
peculiar  refinement  and  taste."  Returning  from 
this  visit  she  spent  two  days  with  Mrs.  Gaskell 
at  Manchester,  and  when  back  at  home  writes  to 
Mrs.  Smith,  referring  to  the  contrast  of  the  life 
she  has  left  and  the  life  she  is  living.  "  Yet  even 
Haworth  Parsonage  does  not  look  gloomy  in  this 
bright  summer  weather." 

Altogether,  the  years  1850  and  1851,  in  which 
she  wrote  no  single  novel,  were  full  of  interesting 
impressions  for  Charlotte  Bronte.  With  all  its 
depressing  moods,  her  life  was  no  longer  given  up 
to  ^'  darning  a  stocking,  or  making  a  pie  in  the 
kitchen  of  an  old  parsonage  in  the  obscurest  of 
Yorkshire  villages,"  as  she  had  once  described  it. 
She  corresponded  with  all  her  brothers  and  sisters 
of  letters,  in  whose  work  she  was  interested:  she 
had  met  most  of  them  on  equal  terms.  Moreover 
the  kindness  of  George  Smith  and  his  two  hench- 
men, Williams  and  Taylor,  had  put  her  In  pos- 
session of  a  great  quantity  of  modern  literature, 


I90  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

not  perhaps  as  helpful  as  the  old  romances  and 
biographies  that  she  had  borrowed  so  continuously 
from  the  Keighley  Library,  but  none  the  less 
abounding  in  a  new  kind  of  interest  for  her  ever 
alert  intelligence.  Throughout  this  and  the  fol- 
lowing years,  indeed,  her  letters  to  these  and  other 
London  friends  deal  entirely  with  the  books  she 
had  borrowed  from  them,  and  they  are  consequent- 
ly far  more  interesting  letters  than  those  written  in 
the  period  of  obscurity  to  the  friends  of  her  girl- 
hood. Ruskin's  Stones  of  Venice^  Thackeray's 
Esmond^  Borrow's  Bible  in  Spain^  and  many  other 
books  of  importance  are  read  and  criticized  with 
judgment.  This  last  phase  of  her  intellectual 
development  could  not  but  have  had  some  effect 
upon  the  crowning  literary  achievement  of  Char- 
lotte Bronte's  life — the  writing  of  Villette. 


CHAPTER   XV 

VILLETTE  AND   THE   PROFESSOR 

Some  ten  years  ago  I  visited  the  scene  of  Fil- 
lette,  the  Penslonnat  Heger  at  Brussels.  The 
school  had  just  been  removed  to  another  quarter 
of  the  city,  and  the  house  was  in  an  entirely  dis- 
mantled condition.  This  enabled  me  to  make  a 
perhaps  more  intimate  acquaintance  with  the  build- 
ing than  I  could  otherwise  have  done.  It  per- 
mitted my  walking  through  the  various  rooms,  and 
tracing  in  minute  detail  every  aspect  of  the  place 
that  had  been  so  vividly  described,  partly  in  The 
Professor,  but  more  in  detail  in  Villette.  Here 
was  the  dormitory,  now  dismantled  of  its  long 
succession  of  beds,  in  one  of  which  at  the  further 
end,  Lucy  Snowe  was  frightened  by  the  supposed 
ghost  of  a  nun.  Then  we  came  to  the  oratory, 
with  the  niche  no  longer  holding  a  crucifix.  Fi- 
nally we  passed  into  the  pleasant  garden,  with  its 

191 


192  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

avenue  of  trees,  and  also  the  ''  allee  defendue  " 
forbidden  to  all  but  the  teachers,  because  it  was 
overlooked  by  the  neighbouring  boys'  school. 

A  visit  to  this  house  in  the  Rue  D'Isabelle 
enabled  one  to  gauge  the  minuteness  with  which 
Charlotte  Bronte  had  followed  every  detail  of 
locality  during  her  two  years'  sojourn  in  the  cit}^ 
she  has  called  "  Villette."  There  were  still  actu- 
ally the  old  pear-trees,  the  same  vine-clad  berceau ; 
everything  indeed  seemingly  unchanged  during 
half  a  century  in  this  quiet  retired  street  in  a  city 
which  has  made  huge  strides  in  other  directions 
during  that  period,  which  indeed  has  since  then 
raised  in  its  midst  many  stately  buildings,  includ- 
ing the  most  magnificent  law  courts  in  Europe. 

It  is  truly  wonderful  how  vegetation  renews  it- 
self year  by  year  in  much  the  same  form  for  in- 
calculable periods.  Those  paths,  and  grass-plats, 
could  have  undergone  practically  no  change  what- 
ever in  the  long  interval  that  separates  the  day 
when  Charlotte  and  Emily  Bronte  walked  arm  in 
arm  through  them,  strangely  isolated  from  the 
mass  of  their  fellow-pupils,  yet  what  changes  have 


VILLETTE  193 

taken  place  In  the  great  world  since  those  days  in 
1842!  But  here  in  the  Brussels  that  I  visited 
there  were  many  living  links  with  that  long  ago. 
I  called  upon  M.  Heger,  who  with  his  wife  had 
kept  this  school  for  so  many  years.  The  old  pro- 
fessor, who  was  eighty-five  years  old  at  this  time, 
was  too  ill  to  see  me,  and  he  died  two  years  later. 
His  wife  has  already  been  dead  for  five  years. 
But  all  his  children  were  flourishing  in  Brussels, 
the  son  as  a  doctor  of  distinction,  the  daughters 
still  retaining  the  old  school,  just  removed  to  an- 
other building,  which  must  for  ever  be  associated 
with  the  Bronte  story.  It  was  my  privilege  to 
hold  a  long  conversation  with  Mile.  Heger,  the 
youngest  child,  the  "  Georgette  "  of  Villette.  I 
found  her  kindly  and  communicative,  and  she  gave 
me  some  interesting  memorials  of  Charlotte  and 
Emily — exercise  books  which  It  was  wonderful 
should  have  survived  from  these  pupils  more  than 
from  hundreds  of  others  that  had  attended  the 
Pensionnat  before  and  after,  but  which  were  un- 
doubtedly genuine.  The  attitude  of  the  Heger 
family  had  not  always  been  so  tolerant  as  I  found 


194  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

It,  and  truly  it  may  be  admitted  that  Villette  was 
a  hard  and  a  cruel  blow,  as  they  and  their  friends 
may  well  have  thought.  It  had  been  translated 
into  French  and  read  by  numbers  of  acquaintances 
in  Brussels  who  without  being  as  malicious  as  the 
author  implied  that  all  Belgians  were,  yet  could 
not  have  failed  of  an  inclination  to  recognize  and 
to  identify. 

Thus  one  is  not  surprised  to  hear  that  when 
Mrs.  Gaskell  went  to  Brussels  in  order  to  search 
out  material  for  the  Life^  Madame  Heger  de- 
clined to  see  her,  although  M.  Heger  "  was  kind 
and  communicative."  M.  Heger  assuredly  had 
less  to  forgive  than  his  wife.  But  how  indispu- 
tably cruel  is  the  portrait  of  Madame  Beck  of 
Villette  and  Mile.  Reuter  of  The  Professor.  We 
have  undeniable  evidence  that  Madame  Heger 
was  a  good  wife,  that  she  was  surrounded  even 
to  her  death  by  a  circle  of  friends  who  esteemed 
her.  We  have  no  reason  to  suppose  that  the 
picture  of  the  Brussels  schoolmistress  In  Villette 
was  any  more  a  moral  counterpart  of  Charlotte 
Bronte's  "  Madame  "  than  the  portrait  of  Mrs. 


VILLETTE  195 

Reed  In  Jane  Eyre  resembled  Mrs.  Sidgwick, 
whom  the  writer  also  doubtless  had  In  her  mind. 
Genius  Is  so  frequently  cruel  In  Its  portraiture, 
and  with  a  certain  ostrlch-like  quality  superadded. 
It  never  knows  that  It  Is  cruel  and  It  never  antic- 
ipates Identification.  Charles  Dickens  frequently 
denied  that  he  had  Intended  Harold  Sklmpole  to 
represent  Leigh  Hunt,  and  he  must  have  been  as- 
tonished and  aggrieved  that  his  friends  should  in- 
sist upon  a  recognition.  Charlotte  Bronte  was  in 
no  similar  danger  because  there  was  no  French 
translation  of  Villette  In  her  lifetime,  but  had  this 
not  been  so  she  would  probably  have  urged,  as  is 
the  way  with  authors,  that  here  as  elsewhere  was 
merely  a  composite  picture  and  not  a  portrait  of 
an  individual.  If  only  such  identifications  could 
be  thrust  aside,  our  enjoyment  and  interest  In  the 
presentation  would  be  the  greater,  but  that  Is  not 
possible.  Yet  If  only  we  can  forget  its  essential 
cruelty,  the  portrait  grips  us.  The  clever,  schem- 
ing schoolmistress,  watching  all  the  threads  of  her 
large  establishment  with  a  Napoleonic  energy, 
holds  one  breathless. 


196  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

But  biography  insists  upon  identification,  espe- 
cially when  the  writer  is  pre-eminently  a  satirist, 
and  if  Charlotte  Bronte  was  cruel — artistically 
cruel — to  a  woman  whom  she  did  not  love,  that 
woman  has  been  more  than  avenged  by  the  per- 
sistence with  which  Miss  Bronte's  own  life  has 
been  identified  with  her  heroine  Lucy  Snowe.  A 
ruthless  criticism  has  punished  her  in  assigning  to 
her  own  nature,  in  all  outward  things  so  strong, 
so  firm,  so  full  of  self-reliance,  the  sufferings  of 
her  heroine  when  brought  face  to  face  with  Paul 
Emanuel.  A  substantial  book  has  been  devoted  to 
this  subject,^  and  it  would  be  absurd  to  ignore  it. 
Hint  and  innuendo  do  more  harm  than  a  candid 
facing  of  the  facts.  Was  Charlotte  Bronte  then 
in  love  with  M.  Heger?  Was  she  in  every  respect 
the  counterpart  of  Lucy  Snowe,  or  Lucy  Frost  as 
in  the  original  manuscript  she  is  many  times 
called?  Many  critics  have  urged  the  point  while 
carefully  qualifying  their  position  by  an  insistence 
that  Charlotte  Bronte  never  swerved  for  a  mo- 
ment from  the  path  of  strict  moral  action,  that  her 
^  The  Brontes — Fact  and  Fiction,  by  Angus  MacKay,  1897. 


VILLETTE  197 

life  will  bear  the  severest  searching  of  the  most 
censorious.  But  such  writers  are  anxious  to  prove 
too  much.  From  Dante  to  our  day  poets  have 
cultivated  a  kind  of  moral  hysteria  side  by  side 
with  a  well-balanced  common-sense  outlook  upon 
life.  Charlotte  Bronte  was  the  first  woman  writer 
to  whom  the  problem  of  sex  appealed  with  all  Its 
complications.  Her  mood  was  morbid  if  you  will. 
She  thought  much  on  the  question  of  love,  and 
dwelt  continually  on  the  problem  of  the  Ideal 
mate.  M.  Heger  was  the  only  man  she  had  met 
with  real  individuality  and  power,  real  culture  and 
capacity.  The  very  fact  that  he  recognized  Emily 
Bronte's  genius  speaks  volumes  for  his  perspicuity. 
It  is  certain  that  no  other  man  at  that  time  had 
the  slightest  Inkling  of  it. 

Charlotte  Bronte  did  not  like  Madame  Heger; 
theirs  were  antipathetic  natures,  and  there  is  noth- 
ing more  to  be  said  on  that  point.  If  Madame 
Heger  had  had  a  taste  for  fiction  and  had  been 
a  governess  say  in  Miss  Margaret  Wooler's  school 
at  Roehead,  she  could  have  made  just  as  unaml- 
able  a  portrait  of  Charlotte  as  the  latter  did  of 


198  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

her.  There  Is  however  no  derogation  of  the  fair 
fame  of  Charlotte  Bronte  in  the  assumption  of  her 
critics,  that  she  did  think  of  M.  Heger  as  uncon- 
genially  mated,  that  she  may  at  times  have  al- 
lowed herself  to  contemplate  the  might-have- 
beens,  the  possibility  of  this  man  as  her  own  hus- 
band had  circumstances  willed  it,  or  as  her  sister 
Emily's  husband,  as  we  see  she  did  in  Shirley. 
There  was  nothing  wrong  in  all  this,  nothing  that 
Mrs.  Grundy's  most  sour  disciple  could  possibly 
object  to.  If  Charlotte  Bronte  preaches  one  thing 
more  than  another,  it  is  that  we  are  to  conquer 
all  inclinations  that  are  the  slightest  degree  in- 
consistent with  a  very  strict  moral  code.  Certainly 
she  is  very  fond  of  a  situation  of  the  type  that 
her  critics  have  assigned  to  her.  Jane  Eyre,  for 
example,  it  will  be  remembered,  falls  in  love  with 
a  man  whom  she  finds  too  late  belongs  to  another, 
and  so  also  does  Lucy  Snowe,  in  the  case  of  John 
Bretton. 

But  surely  the  critics  have  made  rather  too  much 
of  the  autobiographic  nature  of  Villette.  They 
have   not   sufficiently   grasped   the    fact    that    an 


Born  1809 


M.  Paul  H^ger 

The  Hero  of  Villette  and  The  Professor 


Died  \i 


VILLETTE  199 

artist  cultivates  emotions  in  order  to  make  good 
copy  out  of  them.  It  Is  nothing  to  the  point  that 
these  emotions  made  Charlotte  Bronte  very  miser- 
able at  times.  The  real  artist  Is  always  a  creature 
of  moods.  It  is  quite  another  thing  however  to 
suggest  that  when  at  Brussels,  and  suffering,  as  we 
know  she  did  suffer,  Charlotte  Bronte  was  actually 
In  anguish  because  she  was  not  and  could  not  be 
the  wife  of  M.  Heger.  He  was,  it  is  perfectly 
clear,  happily  married.  No  one  however  has  for 
a  moment  suggested  that  Miss  Bronte  ever  at- 
tempted to  draw  from  Madame  Heger  the  love 
of  her  husband,  and  really  all  the  letters  that  have 
come  to  light  bearing  upon  that  year  at  Brussels 
which  commenced  In  the  January  of  1843,  seem 
to  show  that  she  was  far  from  seeing  much  of  M. 
Heger,  and  that  she  was  really  frightfully  lonely. 
She  tells  Branwell  that  she  only  sees  M.  Heger 
once  a  week  or  so,  and  she  Informed  Emily  that 
he  had  scolded  her  for  her  want  of  sociability,  and 
so  concludes : — 

"  He  has  already  given  me  a  brief  lecture  on 
universal    hienveillance,    and,    perceiving    that    I 


200  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

don't  improve  in  consequence,  I  fancy  he  has  taken 
to  considering  me  as  a  person  to  be  let  alone — 
left  to  the  error  of  her  ways." 


Yet  another  point  has  agitated  the  critics  of 
Villette — Charlotte  Bronte's  religion.  She  broad- 
ened doubtless  with  the  years.  The  age  of  Tenny- 
son in  poetry,  Ruskin  and  Carlyle  in  prose,  a 
period  when  what  was  called  the  Broad  Church 
had  captured  some  of  the  best  minds  in  the  Estab- 
lished Religion,  could  not  but  have  influenced  her 
as  she  began  late  in  her  career  to  read  modern 
writers.  It  is  clear  that  her  youth  was  formed 
upon  the  older  authors,  her  father's  theological 
guides  and  her  own  selection  of  books  from  the 
library  at  Keighley,  where  it  may  safely  be  as- 
sumed new  books  were  seldom  forthcoming.  Not 
until  W.  S.  Williams  and  George  Smith  began  to 
send  her  books  from  London  did  her  mind  take 
on  a  new  aspect  of  truth.  But  of  this  there  are 
few  traces  in  her  novels.  These  reflect  the  views 
she  had  imbibed  in  her  childhood,  and  were  of 


VILLETTE  aoi 

that  thoroughly  Orange  complexion  which  her 
father  had  brought  with  him  from  Co.  Down. 
When  she  insists  that  people  should  hold  by  what 
is  ''  purest  in  doctrine  and  simplest  in  ritual  "  it 
is  clear  that  she  implies  that  purity  is  only  to 
be  obtained  when  ornateness  is  absent.  A  violent 
hatred  of  Roman  Catholicism,  indeed,  character- 
izes her  first  novel,  The  Professor^  and  her  last 
novel,  Villette.  Her  girl  pupils  in  Brussels  had 
an  art  of  "  bold,  impudent  flirtation,  or  a  loose, 
silly  leer."  "  I  am  not  a  bigot  in  matters  of 
theology,"  she  continues,  "  but  I  suspect  the  root 
of  the  precocious  impurity,  so  obvious,  so  general 
in  Popish  countries,  is  to  be  found  in  the  discipline, 
if  not  the  doctrines  of  the  Church  of  Rome."  If 
she  had  been  able  to  contrast  impartially  the  moral 
atmosphere  of,  let  us  say,  an  Irish  village  and  a 
Yorkshire  village,  then  or  now  she  might  have  dis- 
covered that  the  root  of  the  matter  Is  elsewhere 
to  seek.  Even  her  father's  parish  had  more  than 
one  scandal  in  her  own  day.  Not  even  ordinary 
truthfulness  Is  credited  to  the  religion  of  the  rival 
communion.     "  She  Is  even  sincere,  so  far  as  her 


ao2  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

religion  would  permit  her  to  be  so/'  is  her  ac- 
count of  one  of  the  pupils  in  this  same  novel,  The 
Professor^  and  her  heroine  is  made  to  say  that 
she  longs  "  to  live  once  more  among  Protestants; 
they  are  more  honest  than  Catholics:  these  all 
think  it  lawful  to  tell  lies."  When  we  come  to 
Fillette,  things  are  even  worse,  or  better  as  the 
reader  may  choose  to  interpret  it.  Methodism 
receives  little  more  favour.  Her  Dissenters  are 
nearly  all  "  engrained  rascals,"  as  she  calls  one 
of  them. 

But  how  unimportant  it  all  is,  although  inter- 
esting in  a  way.  Every  great  writer  in  every  age 
has  been  very  much  in  harmony  with  his  environ- 
ment, and  a  later  age  with  other  views  of  tolera- 
tion cares  for  none  of  these  things,  but  asks  only 
of  the  artistic  achievement.  Two  widely  different 
contemporary  writers,  Charlotte  Bronte  and 
George  Borrow  were  at  one  in  their  hatred  of 
Romanism.  Yet  both  have  received  some  of  their 
most  eloquent  appreciation  from  members  of  that 
Church,  and  in  any  case  it  must  not  be  forgotten 
that    Charlotte    Bronte's   most    impressive    hero. 


VILLETTE  ao3 

Paul  Emanuel,  was  a  Roman  Catholic,  and  that 

she   herself  ''  confessed "   in   a   Roman   Catholic 

church. 

****** 

Villette  is  one  of  the  great  novels  of  literature. 
Mrs.  Bretton  and  Dr.  John — pictures  to  some  ex- 
tent of  Mr.  George  Smith  and  his  mother — Gin- 
evra  Fanshawe  and  Paulina  de  Bassompierre  are 
very  subordinate  to  the  three  characters  who  play 
their  fierce  and  spirited  part  on  this  tiny  stage. 
It  is  the  novel  of  greatest  intensity,  of  most  genuine 
passion,  of  most  satiric  strength  in  the  period  in 
which  it  appeared.  The  book  will  always  rank 
as  the  principal  achievement  of  its  writer. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  understand  why  her  pub- 
lishers three  times  during  her  lifetime  declined 
Miss  Bronte's  request  to  publish  The  Professor. 
Apart  from  its  size — the  impossibility  of  produc- 
ing it  as  a  three-volumed  novel,  there  were  many 
elements  of  crudity.  Young  Cumsworth  would 
scarcely  have  been  ten  years  at  Eton,  and  would 
certainly  not  have  carried  hence  a  great  capacity 
for  reading  and  writing  French  and  German.     In 


204  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

any  case  Villette  was  in  many  particulars  but  a 
rewriting  of  The  Professor,  The  incident  of 
shutting  an  unruly  pupil  up  in  a  cupboard  is  re- 
peated in  both  stories,  and  Madame  Beck  and 
Mile.  Reuter  indulge  in  much  the  same  manoeuvres 
with  their  scholars.  Nevertheless  The  Professor  ^ 
is  full  of  good  things,  and  Frances  Henri  is  per- 
haps the  only  woman  character  In  Charlotte 
Bronte's  novels  of  real  charm. 


Villette  was  commenced  at  the  beginning  of 
185 1,  but  not  before  she  had  felt  compelled  to 
bow  before  a  third  and  final  refusal  of  her  pub- 
lisher to  accept  The  Professor^  a  story  for  which 
she  had  evidently  a  peculiar  affection.  In  May  she 
pays  yet  another  visit  to  London,  this  time  to  see 
the  Great  Exhibition  in  Hyde  Park.  To  that  visit 
I  have  already  referred.  At  this  time  we  find  her 
engaged  in  quite  a  copious  correspondence,  now 

^  The  original  manuscript,  now  in  the  possession  of  Mr. 
Thomas  Wise,  discloses  that  the  book  was  first  called  The 
Master. 


VILLETTE  205 

with  her  old  friends,  and  now  again  with  her  new 
friends  In  London.  She  writes  for  example  to 
Ellen  Nussey,  describing  a  visit  to  Leeds  for  the 
purchase  of  a  bonnet.  "  I  got  one  which  seemed 
grave  and  quiet  there  among  all  the  splendours, 
but  now  it  looks  Infinitely  too  gay  with  its  pink 
lining.  I  saw  some  beautiful  silks  of  pale,  sweet 
colours,  but  had  not  the  spirit  nor  the  means  to 
launch  out  at  the  rate  of  five  shillings  per  yard, 
and  went  and  bought  a  black  silk  at  three  shillings 
after  all."  While  to  Mr.  Smith  she  writes  enthu- 
siastically concerning  Mr.  Ruskln's  Stones  of 
Venice^  which  she  had  just  read  through.  She 
heard  Cardinal  Wiseman  address  a  small  meeting. 
"  He  came  swimming  into  the  room,  smiling,  sim- 
pering and  bowing  like  a  fat  old  lady,  and  looked 
the  picture  of  a  sleek  hypocrite.  The  Cardinal 
spoke  in  a  smooth  whining  manner,  just  like  a 
canting  Methodist  preacher,"  she  added.  We 
hear  nothing  about  authorship  until  September, 
when  in  reply  to  a  suggestion  by  Mr.  George  Smith 
that  she  should  give  him  her  next  book  for  serial 
publication,  she  replied  that  "  were  she  possessed 


2o6  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

of  the  experience  of  a  Thackeray,  or  the  animal 
spirit  of  a  Dickens  it  might  be  possible,  but  even 
then  she  would  not  publish  a  serial  except  on  con- 
dition that  the  last  number  was  written  before  the 
first  came  out."  Her  loyalty  to  her  publisher  was 
extreme,  for  in  yet  another  letter  she  expresses 
her  deep  regret  that  it  was  quite  impossible  for 
her  to  oblige  him  over  this  question  of  a  serial. 
At  the  close  of  the  year  there  came  a  long  and 
serious  illness,  and  as  she  was  recovering  she 
stayed  for  a  time  with  Ellen  Nussey.  "  The 
solitude  of  my  life  I  have  certainly  felt  very  keenly 
this  winter,"  she  writes  to  a  friend,  "  but  every 
one  has  his  own  burden  to  bear,  and  when  there 
is  no  available  remedy  it  is  right  to  be  patient  and 
trust  that  Providence  will  in  His  own  good  time 
lighten  the  load."  The  first  few  months  of  the 
year  1852  Miss  Bronte  was  struggling  back  to 
health.  In  June  of  that  year  she  went  alone  to 
Filey,  on  the  Yorkshire  coast,  and  took  the  oppor- 
tunity of  looking  at  the  tombstone  of  her  sister 
Anne  in  the  churchyard  of  the  old  church  at  Scar- 
borough.     Then   came   a    serious    illness   of   her 


VILLETTE  207 

father,  and  work  on  her  novel  was  again  post- 
poned. We  do  not  hear  more  about  Villette  until 
the  October  of  1852,  when  she  is  able  to  send 
her  publisher  the  first  half  of  the  book.  She  is 
agitated  because  there  is  no  one  to  whom  she  is 
able  to  read  a  single  line,  or  ask  a  word  of  counsel. 
"  Jane  Eyre  was  not  written  under  such  circum- 
stances," she  said,  '^  nor  were  two-thirds  of  Shir- 
ley^  She  would  have  liked  it  to  be  published 
anonymously,  or  under  some  other  pseudonym 
than  that  of  '*  Currer  Bell,"  but  gave  way  when 
told  by  her  publishers  that  it  would  very  much 
interfere  with  their  interests.  Writing  to  her 
publisher  a  little  later,  she  expresses  a  regret  that 
Villette  touches  no  matter  of  public  concern.  "  I 
cannot  write  books  handling  the  topics  of  the  day; 
it  is  of  no  use  trying,"  she  said.  "  Nor  can  I 
write  a  book  for  its  moral."  She  is  pleased  that 
her  publisher  likes  the  opening  sections  of  the 
book,  and  discusses  with  him  its  later  stages,  as 
follows : — 

*'  Lucy  must  not  marry  Dr.  John;  he  is  far  too 
youthful,    handsome,    bright-spirited,    and    sweet- 


ao8  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

tempered;  he  is  a  '  curled  darling  '  of  Nature  and 
of  Fortune,  and  must  draw  a  prize  in  life's  lottery. 
His  wife  must  be  young,  rich,  pretty;  he  must 
be  made  very  happy  indeed.  If  Lucy  marries  any- 
body it  must  be  the  Professor — a  man  in  whom 
there  is  much  to  forgive,  much  to  '  put  up  with.' 
But  I  am  not  leniently  disposed  towards  Miss 
Frost:  from  the  beginning  I  never  meant  to  ap- 
point her  lines  in  pleasant  places.  The  conclusion 
of  this  third  volume  it  still  a  matter  of  some 
anxiety." 

As  a  matter  of  fact  it  would  seem  that  the 
conclusion  of  the  book  gave  her  considerable 
trouble.  Her  father,  to  whom  she  read  it,  was 
very  anxious  that  it  should  end  well,  and  that  she 
should  make  her  hero  and  heroine  marry  and  live 
happily  ever  after.  Her  imagination  had  how- 
ever been  seized  with  the  idea  that  Paul  Emanuel 
should  lose  his  life  at  sea,  hence  the  somewhat 
ambiguous  ending  to  the  book.  She  did  not  wish 
to  hurt  her  father's  feelings,  but  on  the  other 
hand  she  did  not  wish  to  go  against  her  artistic 
conscience.     At  the  end  of  November,  1852,  Vil- 


VILLETTE  209 

lette  was  finished.  "  The  book,  I  think,"  she  says, 
In  sending  It  away,  "  will  not  be  considered  pre- 
tentious, nor  Is  It  of  a  character  to  excite  hostility." 

After  this  a  week  was  spent  with  Ellen  Nussey 
at  Brookroyd,  a  fortnight  with  Harriet  Mar- 
tlneau  at  Ambleside,  and  In  January  the  follow- 
ing year  she  was  again  In  London,  staying  with 
her  publishers,  and  correcting  the  proof-sheets  of 
her  novel,  the  publication  of  which  she  deferred 
until  the  end  of  the  month  In  order  to  give  Mrs. 
GaskelFs  Ruth  the  start  In  the  papers;  and  on 
this  matter  she  writes  to  her  friend,  Mrs.  Gaskell, 
to  the  effect  that  '^  Villette  has  no  right  to  push 
itself  before  Ruth;  there  Is  a  goodness,  a  philan- 
thropic purpose,  a  social  use  In  the  latter  to  which 
the  former  cannot  for  an  Instant  pretend." 

Villette  was  published  on  January  24,  1853, 
and  was  received  with  general  acclamation.  Near- 
ly all  the  reviews  were  favourable,  the  principal 
exception  being  one  written  by  Miss  Martlneau 
in  the  Daily  News.  Miss  Martlneau's  points  of 
disagreement  were  twofold — she  disagreed  with 
the  author  on  the  question  of  love,  and  she  thought 


110  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

her  unfair  to  the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  On 
the  first  point,  at  any  rate,  Miss  Bronte's  reply 
to  her  friend  was  sufficiently  effective — "  I  know 
what  love  Is,  as  I  understand  It,  and  if  man  or 
woman  should  be  ashamed  of  feeling  such  love, 
then  is  there  nothing  right,  noble,  faithful,  truth- 
ful, unselfish  In  this  earth,  as  I  comprehend  recti- 
tude, nobleness,  fidelity,  truth  and  disinterested- 
ness.'' In  February  she  writes  from  Haworth  to 
thank  Mr.  George  Smith  for  sending  her  an  en- 
graving of  Thackeray's  portrait  by  Lawrence. 
At  this  time  interest  in  her  personality  was  grow- 
ing steadily.  The  Bishop  of  the  diocese  came  to 
see  Mr.  Bronte,  and  spent  the  night  in  the  vicar- 
age. Miss  Mulock,  the  author  of  John  Halifax^ 
Gentleman^  and  other  correspondents  wrote  to  her 
for  further  particulars  as  to  the  fate  of  Paul 
Emanuel.  In  April  she  was  again  with  Mrs. 
Gaskell  at  Manchester,  and  in  September  Mrs. 
Gaskell  visited  her  at  Haworth,  and  we  owe  to 
her  quite  the  best  description  of  Miss  Bronte's 
home  in  these  last  years  of  her  life. 

"  I  don't  know  that  I  ever  saw  a  spot  more 


VILLETTE  an 

exquisitely  clean;  the  most  dainty  place  for  that 
I  ever  saw.  To  be  sure  the  life  is  like  clockwork. 
No  one  comes  to  the  house;  nothing  disturbs  the 
deep  repose;  hardly  a  voice  is  heard;  you  catch 
the  ticking  of  the  clock  in  the  kitchen,  or  the  buzz- 
ing of  a  fly  in  the  parlour  all  over  the  house.  Miss 
Bronte  sits  alone  in  her  parlour,  breakfasting  with 
her  father  in  his  study  at  nine  o'clock.  She  helps 
In  the  house  work;  for  one  of  their  servants, 
Tabby,  is  nearly  ninety,  and  the  other  only  a  girl. 
Then  I  accompanied  her  in  her  walks  on  the  sweep- 
ing moors;  the  heather  bloom  had  been  blighted 
by  a  thunderstorm  a  day  or  two  before,  and  was 
all  of  a  livid  brown  colour,  instead  of  the  blaze 
of  purple  glory  it  ought  to  have  been.  Oh !  those 
high,  wild,  desolate  moors,  up  above  the  whole 
world,  and  the  very  realms  of  silence !  Home  to 
dinner  at  two.  Mr.  Bronte  has  his  dinner  sent 
in  to  him.  All  the  small  table  arrangements  had 
the  same  dainty  simplicity  about  them.  Then  we 
rested,  and  talked  over  the  clear  bright  fire;  it  is 
a  cold  country,  and  the  fires  gave  a  pretty  warm 
dancing  light  all  over  the  house.    The  parlour  has 


212  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

been  evidently  refurnished  within  the  last  few 
years,  since  Miss  Bronte's  success  has  enabled  her 
to  have  a  little  more  money  to  spend.  Everything 
fits  into,  and  is  in  harmony  with,  the  idea  of  a 
country  parsonage,  possessed  by  people  of  very 
moderate  means.  The  prevailing  colour  of  the 
room  is  crimson,  to  make  a  warm  setting  for  the 
cold  grey  landscape  without.  There  is  her  likeness 
by  Richmond,  and  an  engraving  from  Lawrence's 
picture  of  Thackeray;  and  two  recesses,  on  each 
side  of  the  high,  narrow,  old-fashioned  mantel- 
piece, filled  with  books — books  given  to  her,  books 
she  has  bought,  and  which  tell  of  her  individual 
pursuits  and  tastes;  not  standard  books." 

Not  less  interesting  is  the  account  of  a  mere 
stranger's  visit  to  Miss  Bronte  at  Haworth  in 
these  days  of  lonely  success : — 

"  I  was  shown  across  the  lobby  into  the  parlour 
to  the  left,  and  there  I  found  Miss  Bronte,  stand- 
ing in  the  full  light  of  the  window,  and  I  had  am- 
ple opportunity  of  fixing  her  upon  my  memory, 
where  her  image  is  vividly  present  to  this  hour. 
She  was  diminutive  in  height,  and  extremely  frag- 


VILLETTE  213 

He.  Her  hand  was  one  of  the  smallest  I  ever 
grasped.  She  had  no  pretensions  to  being  con- 
sidered beautiful,  and  was  as  far  removed  from 
being  plain.  She  had  rather  light  brown  hair, 
somewhat  thin,  and  drawn  plainly  over  her  brow. 
Her  complexion  had  no  trace  of  colour  in  it,  and 
her  lips  were  pallid  also ;  but  she  had  a  most  sweet 
smile,  with  a  touch  of  tender  melancholy  in  it.  Al- 
together she  was  as  unpretending,  undemonstra- 
tive, quiet  a  little  lady  as  you  would  well  meet. 
Her  age  I  took  to  be  about  five-and-thirty.  But 
when  you  saw  and  felt  her  eyes,  the  spirit  that 
created  Jane  Eyre  was  revealed  at  once  to  you. 
They  were  rather  small,  but  of  a  very  peculiar 
colour,  and  had  a  strange  lustre  and  intensity. 
They  were  chameleon-like,  a  blending  of  various 
brown  and  olive  tints.  But  they  looked  you 
through  and  through — and  you  felt  they  were 
forming  an  opinion  of  you,  not  by  mere  acute  not- 
ing of  Lavaterish  physiognomical  peculiarities, 
but  by  a  subtle  penetration  into  the  very  marrow 
of  your  mind,  and  the  innermost  core  of  your  soul. 
Taking  my  hand  again,  she  apologised  for  her  en- 


214  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

forced  absence,  and,  as  she  did  so,  she  looked 
right  through  me.  There  was  no  boldness  in  the 
gaze,  but  an  intense,  direct,  searching  look,  as  of 
one  who  had  the  gift  to  read  hidden  mysteries,  and 
the  right  to  read  them.  I  had  a  feeling  that  I 
never  experienced  before  or  since,  as  though  I  was 
being  mesmerised." 

Through  the  closing  months  of  1853  ^^^  the 
early  part  of  1854  Miss  Bronte,  living  quietly  at 
Haworth,  was  principally  occupied  in  nursing  her 
father,  who  was  getting  very  old  and  very  blind. 
In  April  however  she  was  able  to  announce  to  her 
friends  that  she  was  engaged  to  be  married  to  her 
father's  curate,  and  on  June  29  of  this  year, 
1854,  Charlotte  Bronte  became  Mrs.  Arthur  Bell 
Nicholls. 


CHAPTER    XVI 

MARRIAGE   AND    DEATH 

*'  I  THINK  he  must  be  like  all  the  curates  I  have 
seen,"  Charlotte  Bronte  writes  of  one  of  them. 
''  They  seem  to  me  a  self -seeking,  vain,  empty- 
race."  Her  experience  had  certainly  been  excep- 
tionally wide,  for  until  she  went  to  Brussels  at 
twenty-six  years  of  age  she  had  met  but  few  other 
men  In  her  father's  house.  Curates  there  had  been 
In  abundance.  To  the  three  Individuals  described 
In  Shirley^  one  may  add  at  least  six  others,  and 
two  of  them  desired  to  marry  Miss  Bronte — Mr. 
Bryce  and  Mr.  Nussey.  Mr.  Bryce  proposed  by 
letter  after  one  meeting,  Mr.  Nussey  also  declared 
himself  In  similar  fashion,  and  received  In  return 
much  good  advice  as  to  choosing  a  wife  which,  as 
we  have  seen,  he  quickly  took — In  a  fashion. 
Miss  Bronte  had  become  famous  when  the  next 
proposal  of  marriage  came  to  her.    This  was  from 

215 


21 6  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

Mr.  James  Taylor,  who  was  in  the  employment 
of  her  publishers.  The  firm  suggested  to  Miss 
Bronte  that  Mr.  Taylor  should  come  to  Haworth 
for  the  manuscript  of  Shirley ^  and  her  reply  gave 
an  interesting  glimpse  of  her  peculiarly  isolated 
life.  She  told  Mr.  W.  S.  Williams  that  she  could 
not  offer  any  male  society  as  companions  In  the 
neighbourhood,  that  her  father  "  without  being  in 
the  least  misanthropical  or  sour-natured,  habit- 
ually prefers  solitude  to  society."  Under  these 
circumstances  Miss  Bronte  suggests  that  if  Mr. 
Taylor  still  desires  to  come  for  the  manuscript,  he 
should  only  stay  the  one  day.  Mr.  Taylor  came, 
and  it  is  clear  quickly  lost  his  heart,  and  showed, 
moreover,  much  more  persistency  than  earlier 
lovers.  He  began  to  lend  her  newspapers  and 
books,  and  went  so  far  as  to  half  propose,  only 
to  be  snubbed  into  silence  for  a  period  of  nine 
months,  when  he  reappeared,  or  rather  his 
favourite  newspaper,  which  came  once  again 
through  the  post  to  Haworth.  It  was  the  Athe- 
naum  which  formed  the  singular  medium  of  this 
quaint  courtship.     There  are  many  references  in 


MARRIAGE    AND    DEATH        9.17 

Charlotte  Bronte's  letters  to  her  friend  Ellen 
Nussey  which  seem  to  indicate  that  with  still  a 
little  more  persistency  James  Taylor — *'  the  little 
man,"  as  she  calls  him — might  have  won  his  suit, 
the  more  particularly  as  he  had  a  strong  ally  in 
her  father,  and  touched  her  by  a  certain  resem- 
blance to  her  brother  Branwell.  However  his 
firm  sent  him  to  India,  and  he  accepted  as  final 
Miss  Bronte's  definite  refusal.  He  wrote  to  her 
occasionally  from  Bombay,  and  her  letters  to  him 
have  been  published.^  When  he  returned  to  Eng- 
land in  1856  Charlotte  Bronte  was  dead. 

Miss  Bronte's  fourth  and  this  time  successful 
lover  was  Mr.  Arthur  Bell  NichoUs,  her  father's 
curate:  one  of  that  detested  race  which  she  had 
satirized  so  bitterly  in  Shirley,  and  made  so  many 
contemptuous  references  to  in  her  letters.  Of  Mr. 
Nicholls,  however,  she  had  early  formed  a  kindly 
judgment.  Born  in  18 17,  he  was  a  Scot  by  origin, 
an  Irishman  of  Co.  Antrim  by  birth.  He  was  edu- 
cated at  the  Royal  School  at  Banagher  by  his 
uncle,  the  Rev.  Alan  Bell,  the  headmaster.     From 

^  In  Charlotte  Bronte  and  Her  Circle. 


2i8  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

Trinity  College,  Dublin,  he  passed  in  1844  to  the 
curacy  of  Haworth,  in  succession  to  Mr.  Smith, 
the  "  Malone  "  of  Shirley.  In  that  novel,  written, 
it  will  be  remembered,  in  1849,  he  is  pictured  as 
Mr.  Macarthey : — "  I  am  happy  to  be  able  to  in- 
form you  with  truth  that  this  gentleman  did  as 
much  credit  to  his  country  as  Malone  had  done 
it  discredit.  .  .  .  He  laboured  faithfully  in  the 
parish:  the  schools,  both  Sunday  and  day-schools, 
flourished  under  his  sway  like  green  bay-trees. 
Being  human,  of  course  he  had  his  faults;  these 
however  were  proper,  steady-going  clerical  faults, 
which  many  would  call  virtues:  the  circumstance 
of  finding  himself  invited  to  tea  with  a  Dissenter 
would  unhinge  him  for  a  week.    ..." 

In  1846  Miss  Bronte  repudiated  her  friend's 
suggestion  that  she  was  going  to  marry  Mr. 
Nicholls.  "  He  and  his  fellow  curates,"  she  said, 
"  regard  me  as  an  old  maid,  and  I  regard  them, 
one  and  all,  as  highly  uninteresting,  narrow  and 
unattractive  specimens  of  the  coarser  sex." 

Mr.  Nicholls  however  had  his  moment  of  tri- 
umph, as  we  have  seen,  when  Shirley  appeared, 


MARRIAGE    AND    DEATH        219 

and  thereon  Miss  Bronte  wrote  to  her  friend  that 
he  had  greeted  the  book  with  "  roars  of  laughter." 
''  He  would  read  all  the  scenes  about  the  curates 
aloud  to  papa.  He  triumphed  in  his  own  char- 
acter." Two  years  later  Mr.  Nicholls  appeared  in 
a  more  tragic  role.  He  asked  his  vicar's  daughter 
to  marry  him.  This  was  in  December,  1852. 
The  incident,  indispensable  in  the  life  story  of 
Charlotte  Bronte,  is  best  told  in  her  own  words : — 
''  On  Monday  evening  Mr.  Nicholls  was  here 
to  tea.  I  vaguely  felt  without  clearly  seeing,  as 
without  seeing  I  have  felt  for  some  time,  the  mean- 
ing of  his  constant  looks,  and  strange,  feverish 
restraint.  After  tea  I  withdrew  to  the  dining- 
room  as  usual.  As  usual,  Mr.  Nicholls  sat  with 
papa  till  between  eight  and  nine  o'clock;  I  then 
heard  him  open  the  parlour  door  as  if  going.  I 
expected  the  clash  of  the  front  door.  He  stopped 
in  the  passage;  he  tapped;  like  lightning  it  flashed 
on  me  what  was  coming.  He  entered;  he  stood 
before  me.  What  his  words  were  you  can  guess ; 
his  manner  you  can  hardly  realize,  nor  can  I  for- 
get it.    Shaking  from  head  to  foot,  looking  deadly 


220  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

pale,  speaking  low,  vehemently,  yet  with  difficulty, 
he  made  me  for  the  first  time  feel  what  it  costs 
a  man  to  declare  affection  where  he  doubts 
response. 

"  The  spectacle  of  one  ordinarily  so  statue-like 
thus  trembling,  stirred,  and  overcome,  gave  me 
a  kind  of  strange  shock.  He  spoke  of  sufferings 
he  had  borne  for  months,  of  sufferings  he  could 
endure  no  longer,  and  craved  leave  for  some  hope. 
I  could  only  entreat  him  to  leave  me  then,  and 
promise  a  reply  on  the  morrow.  I  asked  him  if 
he  had  spoken  to  papa.  He  said  he  dared  not. 
I  think  I  half  led,  half  put  him  out  of  the  room. 

*^  When  he  was  gone  I  immediately  went  to 
papa,  and  told  him  what  had  taken  place.  Agita- 
tion and  anger  disproportionate  to  the  occasion 
ensued;  if  I  had  loved  Mr.  Nicholls  and  had  heard 
such  epithets  applied  to  him  as  were  used,  it  would 
have  transported  me  past  my  patience;  as  it  was, 
my  blood  boiled  with  a  sense  of  injustice.  But 
papa  worked  himself  into  a  state  not  to  be  trifled 
with :  the  veins  on  his  temples  started  up  like  whip- 
cord, and  his  eyes  became  suddenly  bloodshot.    I 


MARRIAGE    AND    DEATH        aai 

made  haste  to  promise  that  Mr.  Nicholls  should 
on  the  morrow  have  a  distinct  refusal. 


"  You  must  understand  that  a  good  share  of 
papa's  anger  arises  from  the  Idea,  not  altogether 
groundless,  that  Mr.  Nicholls  has  behaved  with 
dislngenuousness  In  so  long  concealing  his  aim.  I 
am  afraid  also  that  papa  thinks  a  little  too  much 
about  his  want  of  money ;  he  says  the  match  would 
be  a  degradation,  that  I  should  be  throwing  myself 
away,  that  he  expects  me.  If  I  marry  at  all,  to  do 
very  differently;  In  short,  his  manner  of  viewing 
the  subject  Is  on  the  whole  far  from  being  one  In 
which  I  can  sympathize.  My  own  objections  arise 
from  a  sense  of  Incongruity  and  uncongeniallty  in 
feelings,  tastes,  principles." 

Here  clearly  was  the  first  lover  who  realized  in 
a  measure  the  Ideal  of  love  that  Charlotte  Bronte 
had  pictured  In  her  dreams  and  in  her  stories — a 
passionate  man  full  of  devotion,  above  all  sus- 
picion of  wanting  a  wife  for  her  intellectual  at- 
tainments or  literary  achievements.  Whatever  un- 
congeniallty there  may  have  been  in  these  par- 


222  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

tlculars  was  more  than  atoned  for  by  her  father's 
action.  A  woman  hates  injustice  to  a  man  who 
pays  her  the  compliment  of  being  in  love  with 
her,  and  she  is  nearly  always  in  love  with  love. 
As  a  natural  consequence  a  few  months  found 
Charlotte  Bronte  deeply  devoted  to  Mr.  Nicholls, 
who  had  betaken  himself  to  another  curacy  at 
Kirk-Smeaton  by  May  of  1853,  after  five  months 
of  difficulty  and  unpleasantness  with  Mr.  Bronte. 
His  successor  did  not  please,  and  to  the  complaints 
of  her  father  Miss  Bronte  had  a  ready  retort. 
She  loved  Mr.  Nicholls,  and  corresponded  with 
him.  If  she  married  him  they  could  live  at  the 
rectory,  and  Mr.  Bronte's  old  age  would  be  se- 
cured from  trouble.  To  a  man,  very  old  and 
very  nearly  blind,  this  was  well-nigh  an  unanswer- 
able appeal,  and  Mr.  Bronte  relented.  Mr. 
Nicholls  exchanged  back  to  Haworth,  and  the 
wedding  took  place  at  Haworth  Church  on  June 
29,  1854,  Mr.  Sutcliffe  Sowden,  one  of  Mr. 
Nicholls'  friends,  performing  the  ceremony.  Miss 
Wooler  giving  the  bride  away,  and  Miss  Ellen 
Nussey  being  the  only  bridesmaid. 


MARRIAGE    AND    DEATH       223 

The  honeymoon  was  passed  in  Ireland — in  a 
run  through  Kerry  and  Cork  Counties,  and  a  stay 
with  her  husband's  relatives  at  Banagher  in  Kings 
Co.  "  I  must  say  I  like  my  new  relations,"  she 
writes,  "  my  dear  husband,  too,  appears  in  a  new 
light  in  his  own  country.  More  than  once  I  had 
deep  pleasure  in  hearing  his  praises  on  all  sides. 
...  I  pray  to  be  enabled  to  repay  as  I  ought 
the  affectionate  devotion  of  a  truthful,  honourable 


man." 


And  upon  her  return  to  Haworth  she  writes : 
"  Dear  Nell,  during  the  last  six  weeks  the  colour 
of  my  thoughts  is  a  good  deal  changed:  I  know 
more  of  the  realities  of  life  than  I  once  did.  I 
think  many  false  ideas  are  propagated,  perhaps 
unintentionally.  I  think  those  married  women 
who  indiscriminately  urge  their  acquaintances  to 
marry,  much  to  blame.  For  my  own  part,  I  can 
only  say  with  deepest  sincerity  and  fuller  signifi- 
cance what  I  always  said  in  theory,  '  Wait  God's 
will.'  Indeed,  Indeed,  Nell,  it  is  a  solemn  and 
strange  and  perilous  thing  for  a  woman  to  become 
a  wife.    Man's  lot  Is  far,  far  different.  .   .  .  Have 


224  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

I  told  you  how  much  better  Mr.  NichoUs  is?  He 
looks  quite  strong  and  hale;  he  gained  twelve 
pounds  during  the  first  four  weeks  in  Ireland.  To 
see  this  improvement  in  him  has  been  a  main 
source  of  happiness  to  me,  and  to  speak  truth,  a 
subject  of  wonder  too." 

The  letters  that  follow  clearly  indicate  that  love 
had  followed  respect  and  esteem,  as  had  been  her 
"  theory  "  of  marriage,  and  that  she  was  becom- 
ing entirely  devoted  to  her  husband.  These  few 
months  of  married  life  were,  it  is  certain,  quite  the 
happiest  of  her  life.  We  hear  little,  indeed,  of 
authorship — but  they  know  little  of  authorship 
who  think  that  happiness  in  any  robust  sense  and 
the  writing  of  works  of  imagination  are  synony- 
mous terms.  The  months  that  Charlotte  Bronte 
was  writing  her  books  were  probably  the  most 
unhappy  of  her  life.  Now  she  took  on  domestic 
duties.  "  The  married  woman  can  call  but  a  very 
small  portion  of  each  day  her  own,"  she  writes. 

But  her  end  was  approaching.  Charlotte 
Bronte  had  been  but  nine  months  a  wife  when 
she  died  of  an  illness  incidental  to  childbirth  on 


The  Rev.  Arthur  Bell  Nicholls 

The  husband  of  Charlotte  Bronte,  to  whom  she  was  married  June  29,  1854 


MARRIAGE    AND    DEATH        225 

March  31,  1855.  In  a  letter  to  a  friend  from  her 
deathbed  she  writes,  "  I  want  to  give  you  an  as- 
surance which  I  know  will  comfort  you:  that  is 
that  I  find  in  my  husband  the  tenderest  nurse,  the 
kindest  support,  the  best  earthly  comfort  that  ever 
woman  had.  His  patience  never  fails,  and  it  is 
tried  by  sad  days  and  broken  nights."  Then  came 
the  last  words  to  her  husband — surely  as  pathetic 
as  any  in  the  whole  range  of  literary  biography. 
"I  am  not  going  to  die,  am  I?  He  will  not 
separate  us,  we  have  been  so  happy." 


Charlotte  Nicholls  was  buried  beside  her 
mother,  her  brother  Branwell,  and  her  sister  Emily 
in  the  family  vault  in  Haworth  Church.  For  the 
six  years  that  followed  his  wife's  death  Mr. 
Nicholls  stayed  on  at  Haworth.  At  the  death  of 
Mr.  Bronte  he  removed  to  Ireland,  gave  up  the 
Church  as  a  profession,  and  engaged  in  farming — 
an  occupation  he  has  pursued  for  nearly  fifty 
years. 

The  present  writer  first  met  Mr.  Nicholls  in 


226  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

1895.  It  was  on  the  anniversary  of  the  great 
novelist's  death-day — March  31 — fifty  years  ear- 
lier. Mr.  Nicholls  met  me  at  Banagher  station, 
as  I  alighted  from  the  Dublin  train.  Banagher 
in  Kings  Co.  is  situated  on  the  Shannon.  It  has 
been  immortalized  by  a  phrase — "  That  bangs 
Banagher."  At  the  end  of  the  village,  near  by  the 
Protestant  Church,  stood  the  pleasant  farm-house 
in  which  the  former  curate  of  Haworth  was  pass- 
ing his  declining  years.  The  house  was  singularly 
interesting  in  its  multitude  of  Bronte  relics.  On 
the  walls  of  the  drawing-room  were  Richmond's 
portrait  of  Charlotte  Bronte,  the  engravings  of 
Thackeray  and  Wellington  that  so  delighted  her 
heart,  water-colour  drawings  by  all  three  sisters, 
perhaps  most  noticeable,  crude  but  not  the  less  in- 
teresting, Emily's  picture  of  her  dog  "  Keeper  " 
and  Anne's  "  Flossy."  On  the  staircase  was  a  por- 
trait of  Branwell.  I  noted  the  two  rocking-chairs 
so  frequently  occupied  by  the  younger  sisters  in 
their  last  illness — in  fact  the  whole  house  abounded 
in  pathetic  memories  of  that  strangely  different 
life  in  far  away  Yorkshire.     It  almost  seemed  as 


MARRIAGE    AND    DEATH        227 

If  the  wraiths  of  the  immortal  sisters  had  revisited 
the  land  of  their  fathers — a  land  which  with  all 
its  romance  and  poetry  had  made  no  impression 
upon  them  when  they  lived,  although,  as  I  have 
said,  Charlotte  Bronte  spent  some  happy  weeks 
there  soon  after  marriage,  and  indeed  had  stayed 
in  this  very  house. 

But  what  of  Mr.  Nicholls?  I  had  almost  been 
prepared  for  a  narrow-minded,  limited,  austere 
man.  I  had  read  estimates  of  him  that  inclined 
to  this  view.  Miss  Ellen  Nussey,  the  very  per- 
sonification of  loyalty  to  the  memory  of  her  dear 
friend,  was  nevertheless  not  kindly  disposed  to 
Mr.  Nicholls.  From  her  Mrs.  Gaskell  had  im- 
bibed a  prejudice  that  is  expressed  in  more  than 
one  letter  I  have  seen.  Mr.  Nicholls  had  his 
idiosyncrasies,  as  have  most  of  us,  and  no  one 
could  face  the  life  of  a  country  village  without 
incurring  prejudice  and  misunderstanding.  The 
author  of  Cranford  might  well  realize  that.  In 
any  case  time,  we  may  assume,  had  softened 
down  many  angularities  in  Mr.  Nicholls,  as  it 
softens  them  with  most  men,  and  the  genial  man 
who  shook  hands  with  me  at  Banagher  station, 


228  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

carried  me  off  in  his  jaunting  car  to  his  pleasant 
home  and  Introduced  me  to  his  kindly  family  circle 
was  an  entirely  benign  and  liberal-minded  man, 
with  no  remnants  in  his  nature  of  that  intolerance 
and  pedantry  that  may  or  may  not  have  been  in 
his  nature  half  a  century  earlier.  He  was  keenly 
interested  in  everything  that  was  going  on  in  the 
great  world,  very  gratified  at  the  universal  recog- 
nition of  his  wife's  genius,  and  greatly  apprecia- 
tive of  the  homage  that  was  now  offered  on  all 
sides.^ 

1  Mr.  Nicholls  was  full  of  kindly  memories  of  old  Mr.  Bronte. 
He  denied  the  many  rumours  that  had  so  long  flourished  about 
his  eccentricities,  while  admitting  that  he  had  a  temper  on  oc- 
casions. He  thought  the  eariier  opposition  to  his  marriage  not 
unnatural  in  a  man  who  had  learnt  to  value  his  daughter  very 
highly.  "I  had  less  than  a  hundred  a  year  at  the  time,"  he 
remarked. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

THE  GLAMOUR  OF  THE  BRONTES 

Just  as  a  love  of  Milton's  Lycidas  has  been 
proclaimed  to  be  a  touchstone  of  taste  In  poetry, 
so  I  think  may  an  appreciation  of  the  Bronte 
novels  be  counted  as  a  touchstone  of  taste  in  prose 
literature.  This  Is  more  particularly  the  case 
so  far  as  Emily  Bronte's  Wuthering  Heights  Is 
concerned.  Not  to  realize  the  high  quahtles  of 
that  masterpiece  of  fiction  Is  to  be  blind  Indeed  to 
all  the  conditions  which  go  to  make  a  great  book. 
Wuthering  Heights  Is  Indeed  unique  In  modern 
literature;  It  Is  entirely  Independent  of  all  the  fic- 
tion that  had  gone  before.  Because  Emily  Bronte 
learnt  German  and  doubtless  read  many  an  eerie 
German  story,  It  has  been  suggested  that  this  was 
a  literature  that  Influenced  her  materially;  because 
she  had  an  Irish  father,  who  may  or  may  not 
have  told  tales  by  the  fireside  recalling  his  boy- 

229 


230  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

hood,  it  has  been  claimed  that  here  was  the  ma- 
terial upon  which  she  worked.  Not  one  of  these 
suppositions  will  bear  examination.  The  only  ex- 
ternal influence  that  would  seem  to  have  made  this 
wonderful  book  were  those  wild  and  silent  moors 
that  the  writer  loved  so  well,  and  where  we  are 
sure  from  earliest  childhood  she  constantly  kept 
solitary  communion  with  all  the  weird  phantasies 
of  her  brain. 

This  element  of  mystery  in  all  that  concerned 
Emily  Bronte,  the  absence  of  a  single  line  from 
her  to  any  correspondent  furnishing  some  revela- 
tion of  character,  the  non-existence  even  of  a  por- 
trait bearing  the  faintest  resemblance  to  her,  the 
few  casual  glimpses  of  a  personality  that  loved 
dogs  more  than  human  beings,  of  a  nature  that 
was  quite  unlike  to  many  thousands  of  her  fellow 
countrywomen  that  were  born  into  the  world  in 
these  same  days  of  the  first  quarter  of  the  last 
century — all  these,  combined  with  the  fact  that 
every  critic  without  exception  that  has  been 
brought  into  contact  with  her  poetry  and  prose  has 
found  it  glorious,  and  you  have  here  at  least  one 


GLAMOUR    OF   THE    BRONTES  231 

element  that  provides  a  glamour  to  the  story  of 
the  Brontes. 

A  second  element  of  this  glamour  Is  furnished 
by  the  circumstance  of  the  very  existence  of  a 
family  of  four  children,  all  of  them  with  a  taste 
for  writing,  and  all  of  them  destined  to  die  young. 
Branwell  and  Anne  are  but  quite  minor  figures 
in  this  strange  drama,  but  that  one  family  should 
have  produced  two  young  girls  of  the  calibre  of 
Emily  and  Charlotte  Is  of  Itself  an  unique  cir- 
cumstance In  English  literature.  Emily  the  reti- 
cent, whose  pages  give  forth  not  one  single  scrap 
of  self-revelation,  who  is  as  Impersonal  as  Shak- 
spere,  revealed  only  In  certain  poems  that  hers  was 
on  the  whole  a  sombre  pagan  outlook  upon  life, 
in  which  the  riddle  of  the  universe  is  found  to  be 
insoluble.  Charlotte  on  the  other  hand  offering 
us  an  entire  contrast,  taking  us  so  abundantly  into 
her  confidence  alike  In  her  letters  and  her  books. 
She  has  an  opinion  upon  every  subject.  Here  is 
indeed  no  lack  whatever  of  self-revelation,  and 
very  piquant  it  all  Is.  We  know  Charlotte 
Bronte's  attitude  on  the  relation  of  capital  and 


232  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

labour,  on  the  virtues  of  revealed  religion,  by 
which  she  usually  meant  the  tenets  of  the  Church 
of  England,  on  books  and  on  men ;  there  was  not 
a  single  human  being,  with  the  exception  of  her 
own  father,  that  she  did  not  permit  herself  to 
criticise  with  the  utmost  frankness.  Her  girl 
friends,  and  the  literary  friends  of  later  years, 
every  casual  acquaintance  indeed,  equally  came  un- 
der that  satiric  touch.  The  personal  note  was  not 
quite  as  common  in  literature  then  as  it  is  to-day, 
and  that  is  why  Charlotte  Bronte's  correspondence 
will  always  have  an  attraction  of  its  own.  Added 
to  this,  it  is  indisputable  that  she  was  a  singularly 
great  novelist.  It  has  recently  been  suggested  that 
the  popularity  of  her  books  is  on  the  wane.  The 
idea  probably  arises  from  the  experiences  of  one 
or  two  publishers,  but  a  dozen  publishers  at  least 
are  at  present  engaged  in  issuing  the  Bronte 
novels,  and  from  inquiries  I  have  made  I  am  satis- 
fied that  while  not,  and  rightly,  holding  the  same 
vogue  as  do  Scott,  Dickens,  and  Thackeray,  she 
comes  next  to  them  in  general  acceptance  among 
the  English  novelists  of  the  past. 


GLAMOUR    OF   THE    BRONTES  2:^3 

It  Is  true  she  has  limitations,  most  obvious  in 
Shirley,  but  to  be  found  in  a  measure  in  all  her 
books ;  a  kindly  benevolent  outlook  upon  life  there 
is  not.  Some  of  her  pictures  of  men  and  women 
were  grotesque  even  when  written ;  they  are  doubly 
grotesque  to-day  without  being  far  enough  away 
from  us  to  enable  us  to  feel  that  she  is  giving  us 
a  picture  of  a  bygone  era.  But  when  all  limita- 
tions are  conceded,  there  still  remain  to  us  great 
books,  full  of  Interest,  of  Imperishable  character 
drawing.  Jane  Eyre  and  Lucy  Snowe,  Rochester 
and  Paul  Emanuel,  with  a  number  of  minor  char- 
acters are  all  drawn  with  a  master  touch,  and  while 
new  books  must  necessarily  ever  displace  the  old 
with  the  majority  of  readers,  there  will  never, 
we  may  be  sure,  be  a  time  when  a  student  of  litera- 
ture will  not  find  it  essential  to  make  the  acquaint- 
ance of  this  famous  gallery  of  creations,  that  filled 
so  large  a  space  In  the  reading  of  an  earlier  genera- 
tion. These  books  must  be  read  if  only  for  their 
style,  If  only  for  their  fine  passionate  phrases,  they 
must  be  read  still  more  for  their  fine  moral  and 
intellectual  quahtles,  for  the  stern  sense  of  duty 


234  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

that  belongs  to  them,  the  scorn  of  all  meanness 
and  trickery,  the  wonderful  grasp  of  the  hard  facts 
of  life,  of  the  stern  facts  of  our  being.  "  Life  is 
a  battle,"  she  said.  "  God  grant  that  we  may  all 
be  able  to  fight  it  well."  They  will  be  read  above 
all  because  more  truly  than  any  other  writer  in 
our  fiction,  Charlotte  Bronte  has  pictured  an  ideal 
of  love  which  will  always  make  its  appeal  to  many 
hearts.  In  her  books  we  find  the  passionate  devo- 
tion of  one  human  being  to  another,  growing  more 
intense  with  time,  based  partly  on  intellectual  sym- 
pathy, partly  on  spiritual  affinity,  and  yet  again 
upon  absorbing  passion.  Most  of  our  writers 
love  only  to  depict  the  casual  devotion  based 
on  a  pretty  face  or  a  charming  disposition. 
Further,  they  have  not  dared  to  go  until  our 
own  time  when  the  sex  novelist  has  gone  too 
far. 

Finally  in  considering  this  question  of  the 
glamour  of  the  Brontes,  we  come  again  to  the 
point  of  vivid  interest  that  they  have  been  able 
to  excite  through  their  own  personality.  What 
could  be  more  marked  in  this  way  than  the  note 


GLAMOUR    OF   THE    BRONTES  23s 

that  Charlotte  Bronte  wrote  five  years  before  she 
died,  concerning  her  sisters,  some  passages  from 
which  have  already  been  quoted  in  this  little  book, 
and  another  and  longer  passage  may  well  be 
quoted  here: — 

"  About  five  years  ago,"  wrote  Miss  Bronte  in 
1850,  "my  two  sisters  and  myself,  after  a  pro- 
longed period  of  separation,  found  ourselves  re- 
united, and  at  home.  Resident  in  a  remote  district, 
where  education  had  made  little  progress,  and 
where,  consequently,  there  was  no  inducement  to 
social  intercourse  beyond  our  own  domestic  circle, 
we  were  wholly  dependent  on  ourselves  and  each 
other,  on  books  and  study,  for  the  enjoyments  and 
occupations  of  life.  The  highest  stimulus,  as  well 
as  the  liveliest  pleasure,  we  had  known  from  child- 
hood upwards  lay  in  attempts  at  literary  composi- 
tion. We  had  very  early  cherished  the  dream 
of  becoming  authors.  This  dream,  never  relin- 
quished, even  when  distance  divided  and  absorbing 
tasks  occupied  us,  now  suddenly  acquired  strength 
and  consistency.  It  took  the  character  of  a  re- 
solve.   We  agreed  to  arrange  a  small  selection  of 


22,6  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

our  poems,  and,  if  possible,  get  them  printed. 
Averse  to  personal  publicity,  we  veiled  our  own 
names  under  those  of  Currer,  Ellis,  and  Acton 
Bell;  the  ambiguous  choice  being  dictated  by  a  sort 
of  conscientious  scruple  at  assuming  Christian 
names  positively  masculine,  while  we  did  not  like 
to  declare  ourselves  women,  because — without  at 
that  time  suspecting  that  our  mode  of  writing  and 
thinking  was  not  what  is  called  *  feminine  ' — we 
had  a  vague  impression  that  authoresses  are  liable 
to  be  looked  on  with  prejudice;  we  had  noticed 
how  critics  sometimes  use  for  their  chastisement 
the  weapon  of  personality  and  for  their  reward  a 
flattery  which  is  not  true  praise.  The  bringing 
out  of  our  little  book  was  hard  work.  As  was 
to  be  expected,  neither  we  nor  our  poems  were 
at  all  wanted;  but  for  this  we  had  been  prepared 
at  the  outset.  Though  inexperienced  ourselves,  we 
had  read  the  experience  of  others.  Through 
many  obstacles  a  way  was  at  last  made,  and  the 
book  was  printed;  it  did  not  obtain  much  favour- 
able criticism,  and  is  scarcely  known ;  but  ill-success 
failed  to  crush  us;  the  mere  effort  to  succeed  had 


GLAMOUR    OF   THE    BRONTES  237 

given  a  wonderful  zest  to  existence;  it  must  be 
pursued.  We  each,  therefore,  set  to  work  on  a 
prose  tale." 


And  then  that  final  tribute  to  her  sisters'  memo- 
ries:— ''I  may  sum  up  all  by  saying  that  for 
strangers  they  were  nothing;  for  superficial  ob- 
servers less  than  nothing;  but  for  those  who  had 
known  them  all  their  lives  in  the  intimacy  of  close 
relationship,  they  were  genuinely  good,  and  truly 
great." 

Some  six  years  after  this  tribute  had  been  paid, 
there  came  that  splendid  recognition  by  Mrs.  Gas- 
kell,  an  accomplished  writer  who  has  added  more 
than  one  book  of  enduring  reputation  to  our  liter- 
ature. With  so  fine  an  imagination  it  was  only 
natural  that  she  should  write  a  beautiful  book,  a 
book  calculated  still  further  to  kindle  popular  In- 
terest. It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  Mrs.  Gas- 
kell's  Life  of  Charlotte  Bronte  has  received  as  en- 
thusiastic praise  from  the  critics  as  any  one  of  her 
own  novels,  or  even  the  novels  of  the  friend  whose 


238  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

fame  she  was  to  assist  so  largely.  There  are  those 
who  have  read  that  biography  who  have  never 
read  the  novels,  and  have  found  in  its  pathetic 
story  so  effectively  told  a  charm  which  pertains 
to  few  biographies.  I  recall,  however,  a  visit  to 
Mr.  Bronte's  successor  at  Haworth,^  in  which  that 
gentleman,  after  courteously  showing  me  over  the 
house,  in  which  he  had  made  many  marked  im- 
provements, and  to  which  he  had  added  many  ma- 
terial comforts,  took  down  from  a  shelf  his  copy 
of  Mrs.  Gaskell's  book  and  pointed  out  the  old- 
fashioned  engraving  of  the  parsonage  as  the 
Brontes  knew  it.  "  Is  that  anything  like  the 
place?"  he  asked  triumphantly,  wishing  to  em- 
phasise what  he  considered  the  exaggeration  of 
its  dreariness.  It  is  not  much  like  the  Haworth 
of  to-day,  but  it  is  not  unlike  the  spot  as  the 
Bronte  children  knew  it,  and  indeed,  Mary  Tay- 
lor writing  to  thank  Mrs.  Gaskell  for  "  a  true 
picture  of  a  melancholy  life,"  declared  that  it  was 
"  not  so  gloomy  as  the  truth,"  and  that  her  friend 

^  The  Rev.  John  Wade,  who  was  incumbent  of  Haworth 
from  1 86 1  to  i8q8. 


GLAMOUR    OF   THE    BRONTES  239 

Charlotte  Bronte,  "  a  woman  of  first-rate  talents, 
industry  and  integrity,"  had  lived  all  her  life 
"  in  a  walking  nightmare  of  '  poverty  and  self- 
suppression.'  " 

Following  upon  Mrs.  Gaskell's  notable  picture 
of  the  life  of  the  Bronte  sisters,  we  have  had  not 
a  few  brilliant  criticisms  of  their  books.  A  long 
succession  of  able  men  and  women  have  in  the 
succeeding  years  offered  homage  at  this  shrine. 
Mr.  Swinburne  has  described  Charlotte  Bronte  as 
"  a  woman  of  the  first  order  of  genius,"  and  has 
not  hesitated  to  place  Emily  still  higher.  But 
perhaps,  after  all,  the  finest  tribute  to  the  genius 
of  Charlotte  Bronte  comes  from  Thackeray,  who 
after  her  death  introduced  a  fragment  of  her  work 
called  Emma  ^  to  the  readers  of  the  Cornhill 
Magazine.  "I  fancied  an  austere  little  Joan  of 
Arc  marching  in  upon  us  and  rebuking  our  easy 
lives,  our  easy  morals !  She  gave  me,"  he  tells  us, 
"  the  impression  of  being  a  very  pure,  and  lofty, 

*  There  were  only  some  three  small  fragments  of  manu- 
script left  at  Miss  Bronte's  death,  all  apparently  written  after 
Villette,  but  not  one  of  them  of  any  real  significance. 


240  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

and  high  minded  person.  A  great  and  holy  rever- 
ence of  right  and  truth  seemed  to  be  with  her 
always.  Who  that  has  known  her  books  has  not 
admired  the  artist's  noble  English,  the  burning 
love  of  truth,  the  bravery,  the  simplicity,  the  in- 
dignation at  wrong,  the  eager  sympathy,  the  pious 
love  and  reverence,  the  passionate  honour,  so  to 
speak,  of  the  woman?  What  a  story  is  that  of 
the  family  of  poets  in  their  solitude  yonder  on  the 
gloomy  Yorkshire  moors !  " 


APPENDIX 

The  following  letters  written  to  the  brother 
of  the  friend  whose  marriage  was  under  contem- 
plation are  interesting.  The  first  is  from  Upper- 
wood  House,  Rawdon: — 

"  I  am  about  to  employ  part  of  a  Sunday  even- 
ing in  answering  your  letter.  You  will  perhaps 
think  this  hardly  right,  and  yet  I  do  not  feel  that 
I  am  doing  wrong.  Sunday  evening  is  almost  my 
only  time  of  leisure,  no  one  would  blame  me  if 
I  were  to  spend  this  spare  time  in  a  pleasant  chat 
with  a  friend.  Is  it  worse  to  spend  it  in  writing 
a  friendly  letter? 

^'  I  have  just  seen  my  little  noisy  charges  depos- 
ited snugly  in  their  cribs — and  I  am  sitting  alone  in 
the  schoolroom  with  the  quiet  of  a  Sunday  evening 
pervading  the  grounds  and  gardens  outside  my 
window.  I  owe  you  a  letter — can  I  choose  a  bet- 
ter time  than  the  present  for  paying  my  debt? 

241 


242  CHARLOTTE   BRONTE 

Now  you  need  not  expect  any  gossip  or  news,  I 
have  none  to  tell  you — even  If  I  had  I  am  not 
at  present  in  the  mood  to  communicate  them — you 
will  excuse  an  unconnected  letter.  If  I  had 
thought  you  critical  or  captious  I  would  have  de- 
clined the  task  of  corresponding  with  you.  When 
I  reflect  indeed — it  seems  strange  that  I  should 
sit  down  to  write  without  a  feeling  of  formality 
and  restraint  to  an  individual  with  whom  I  am 
personally  so  little  acquainted  as  I  am  with  your- 
self— ^but  the  fact  Is,  I  cannot  be  formal  in  a  letter ; 
If  I  write  at  all,  I  must  write  as  I  think.  It  seems 
your  sister  has  told  you  that  I  am  become  a  gov- 
erness again — as  you  say,  It  is  indeed  a  hard  thing 
for  flesh  and  blood  to  leave  home,  especially  a 
good  home — not  a  wealthy  or  splendid  one — my 
home  Is  humble  and  unattractive  to  strangers, 
but  to  me  it  contains  what  I  shall  find  nowhere 
else  in  the  world — the  profound  and  Intense  affec- 
tion which  brothers  and  sisters  feel  for  each  other 
when  their  minds  are  cast  in  the  same  mould,  their 
Ideas  drawn  from  the  same  source — when  they 
have  clung  to  each  other  from  childhood  and 


APPENDIX  243 

when  family  disputes  have  never  sprung  up  to 
divide  them. 

"  We  are  all  separated  now,  and  winning  our 
bread  amongst  strangers  as  we  can — my  sister 
Anne  is  near  York,  my  brother  in  a  situation  near 
Halifax,  I  am  here,  Emily  is  the  only  one  left  at 
home,  where  her  usefulness  and  willingness  make 
her  Indispensable.  Under  these  circumstances, 
should  we  repine?  I  think  not — our  mutual  af- 
fection ought  to  comfort  us  under  all  difficulties — 
if  the  God  on  whom  we  must  all  depend  will  but 
vouchsafe  us  health  and  the  power  to  continue  in 
the  strict  line  of  duty,  so  as  never  under  any 
temptation  to  swerve  from  it  an  inch — we  shall 
have  ample  reason  to  be  grateful  and  contented. 

"  I  do  not  pretend  to  say  that  I  am  always  con- 
tented ;  a  governess  must  often  submit  to  have  the 
heart-ache.  My  employers,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  White, 
are  kind,  worthy  people  In  their  way,  but  the  chil- 
dren are  Indulged.  I  have  great  difficulties  to  con- 
tend with  sometimes — perseverance  will  perhaps 
conquer  them — and  it  has  gratified  me  much  to 
find  that  the  parents  are  well  satisfied  with  their 


244  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

children's  improvement  in  learning  since  I  came. 
But  I  am  dwelling  too  much  upon  my  own  con- 
cerns and  feelings.  It  is  true  they  are  interesting 
to  me,  but  it  is  wholly  impossible  they  should  be 
so  to  you,  and  therefore  I  hope  you  will  slip  the 
last  page,  for  I  repent  having  written  it. 

"  A  fortnight  since  I  had  a  letter  from  your 
sister  urging  me  to  go  to  Brookwyd  for  a  single 
day.  I  felt  such  a  longing  to  have  a  respite  from 
labour  and  to  get  once  more  amongst '  old  familiar 
faces  '  that  I  conquered  diffidence  and  asked  Mrs. 
White  to  let  me  go.  She  complied,  and  I  went 
accordingly  and  had  a  most  delightful  holiday. 
I  saw  your  mother,  your  sisters,  and  brothers ;  all 
were  well.  Ellen  talked  of  endeavouring  to  get 
a  situation  somewhere.  I  did  not  encourage  the 
idea  much — I  advised  her  rather  to  go  to  you  for 
a  while.  I  think  she  wants  a  change,  and  I  dare- 
say you  would  be  glad  to  have  her  as  a  companion 
for  a  few  months. 

"  I  inquired  if  there  was  any  family  of  the  name 
of  Barrett  in  this  neighbourhood,  but  I  cannot  hear 
of  any  such,  though  I  understand  there  is  a  Mr., 


APPENDIX  245 

Mrs.,  and  Miss  Barwick — the  name  in  pronuncia- 
tion sounds  very  similar. 

"  My  time  is  out.  With  sincere  good  wishes 
for  your  welfare  and  kind  love  to  your  sister." 

"  I  think  I  told  you  I  had  heard  something  of 
Mr.  Lincoln's  affair  before,  but  I  thought  from 
the  long  interval  that  had  elapsed  between  his  visit 
to  Brookwyd  and  his  late  declaration  that  some 
impediment  had  occurred  to  prevent  his  proceed- 
ing further.  I  own  I  am  glad  to  hear  that  this 
is  not  the  case,  for  I  know  few  things  that  would 
please  me  better  than  to  hear  of  Ellen's  being  well 
married.  This  little  adverb  well  is,  however,  a 
condition  of  importance;  it  implies  a  great  deal — 
fitness  of  character,  temper,  pursuits,  and  com- 
petency of  fortune.  Your  description  of  Mr. 
Lincoln  seems  to  promise  all  these  things;  there  is 
but  one  word  in  it  that  appears  exceptionable — 
you  say  he  is  eccentric.  If  his  eccentricity  is  not 
of  a  degrading  or  ridiculous  character — if  it  does 
not  arise  from  weakness  of  mind — I  think  Ellen 
would  hardly  be  justified  in  considering  it  a  serious 


246  CHARLOTTE    BRONTE 

objection;  but  there  is  a  species  of  eccentricity 
which,  showing  Itself  In  silly  and  trifling  forms, 
often  exposes  Its  possessor  to  ridicule — this,  as  It 
must  necessarily  weaken  a  wife's  respect  for  her 
husband,  may  be  a  great  evil.  I  have  advised 
Ellen  as  strongly  as  my  limited  knowledge  of  the 
business  gives  me  a  right  to  do,  to  accept  Mr. 
Lincoln  In  case  he  should  make  decided  proposals. 
In  consequence  of  this  advice,  she  seems  to  suspect 
that  I  have  had  some  hand  in  helping  *  to  cook 
a  certain  hash  which  has  been  concocted  at  Earn- 
ley.'  I  use  her  own  words,  which  I  cannot  inter- 
pret, for  I  do  not  comprehend  them — you  can 
clear  me  of  any  such  underhand  and  meddling 
dealings.  What  I  have  had  to  say  on  the  subject 
has  been  said  entirely  to  herself,  and  it  amounted 
simply  to  this:  *  If  Mr.  Lincoln  is  a  good,  honour- 
able, and  respectable  man,  take  him,  even  though 
you  should  not  at  present  feel  any  violent  affec- 
tion for  him — the  folly  of  what  the  French  call 
"  une  grande  passion  '*  Is  not  consistent  with  your 
tranquil  character;  do  not  therefore  wait  for  such 
a  feeling.     If  Mr.  Lincoln  be  sensible  and  good- 


APPENDIX  247 

tempered,  I  do  not  doubt  that  in  a  little  while  you 
would  find  yourself  very  happy  and  comfortable 
as  his  wife.* 

"  You  will  see  by  these  words  that  I  am  no 
advocate  for  the  false  modesty  which  you  com- 
plain of,  and  which  induces  some  young  ladies  to 
say  *  No  '  when  they  mean  '  Yes.'  But  if  I  know 
Ellen,  she  is  not  one  of  this  class — she  ought  not 
therefore  to  be  too  closely  urged;  let  her  friends 
state  their  opinion  and  give  their  advice,  and  leave 
it  to  her  own  sense  of  right  and  reason  to  do 
the  rest.  It  seems  to  us  better  that  she  should 
be  married — but  if  she  thinks  otherwise,  perhaps 
she  is  the  best  judge.  We  know  many  evils  are 
escaped  by  eschewing  matrimony,  and  since  so 
large  a  proportion  of  the  young  ladies  of  these 
days  pursue  that  rainbow-shade  with  such  unre- 
mitting eagerness,  let  us  respect  an  exception  who 
turns  aside  and  pronounces  it  only  a  coloured 
vapour  whose  tints  will  fade  on  a  close  approach." 

THE   END 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WfflCH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below, 
or  on  the  date  to  which  renewed.  Renewals  only: 

Tel.  No.  642-3405 
Renewals  may  be  made  4  days  prior  to  date  due. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


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